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POLITICS: UN Readies for Biggest Ever Poll in Congo

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2006 (IPS) - The United Nations is undertaking its biggest single electoral assistance programme in the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – involving 30 million ballots, 50,000 polling stations, 300,000 U.N. staffers and about 1,300 international observers – which will culminate in the election of a president and parliament for the first time in over 45 years.

The nationwide poll, funded and supervised mostly by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Mission in the DRC (MONUC), is costing 432 million dollars.

“These elections are critical for stability in the DRC and in all of central Africa,” says Babacar Cisse, UNDP country director.

Scheduled to take place over the weekend, the elections are also an important step in a peace process ending a five-year civil war, which involved six neighbouring countries and killed a staggering four million people.

The previous biggest U.N. electoral assistance programme was in Afghanistan, with less than a third of the DRC’s population of about 60 million people.

President Joseph Kabila, who took power after his father’s assassination in 2001, is the frontrunner among 32 candidates, while over 9,600 others are vying for 500 seats in the country’s national assembly. The number of registered voters is estimated at 25.7 million.

Asked about the growing trend of U.N.-assisted electoral programmes worldwide, UNDP’s William Orme told IPS: “The list is so long. On average every two or three weeks there is an election in a developing country where UNDP has provided electoral assistance of some kind.”

But he pointed out that the biggest programmes are in post-conflict countries where the civil service and legal machinery needed to manage an election must be constructed almost from scratch.

Liberia would be a good recent representative example, he said. In Iraq, UNDP also provided substantial assistance and advisory help to local authorities for voter registration in what were obviously extremely difficult conditions.

“But the DRC combines all these challenges with no physical infrastructure, including useable roads, in most of what is an enormous country; no legal or political structure in place for a democratic election (as the last one was with Patrice Lumumba at independence in 1960); and continuing violent conflict in a number of provinces,” he added.

The existing 19,800-strong U.N. peacekeeping force (MONUC), the largest in U.N. history, is expected to ensure an orderly election process.

In April, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the deployment of a European Union (EU) reserve force to provide additional security during the elections.

According to the resolution, the new 1,450-strong force, named Eufor RD Congo, will also guard the Kinshasa airport, protect installations, and support MONUC.

“There are about 1,200 Congolese who die every single day from the effects of the conflict,” says Ross Mountain, UNDP resident representative in DRC and deputy special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “That’s a tsunami every six months..”

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF says that half the 1,200 Congolese dying each day are children.

“Children bear the brunt of conflict, disease and death, not only as victims but also as witnesses to, and at times, forced participants in crimes that can inflict lifelong physical and psychological trauma,” UNICEF said in a statement released last week.

In the lead up to the formation of a legitimate government, UNICEF has urged the international community to put pressure on Congo’s political factions. “Improving the lives of children must be at the top of the country’s post-election agenda.”

Caroline Green of Oxfam International said her organisation has “a big (humanitarian) programme in DRC.”

“Oxfam is optimistic about the opportunity that these elections present to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The elections are a clear historic opportunity to bring stability to a country ravaged by decades of conflict and bad governance,” Green told IPS.

“We have no wish to pre-judge how the elections will turn out, but fervently hope that they are free and fair and provide all people in the country with a satisfactory democratic outcome,” she noted.

Green also pointed out that elections alone will not be enough to resolve DRC’s many challenges, making it vital that after the election the “international community doesn’t just cut and run, leaving the job half done.”

“Political tensions can be expected to increase and threats to protection of civilians are likely to persist for the foreseeable future. Increased support from the international community for humanitarian needs must continue long after the flurry of activity around the elections has passed,” she warned.

Meanwhile, some sections of the Catholic hierarchy in DRC have issued a statement urging voters to boycott the elections because of charges of fraud in voter registration and possible rigging at the polls.

“The members of the Episcopal Council invite the people, if these irregularities are not corrected, to abstain from the elections,” said a statement by Rev. Leon de Saint Moulin.

A statement by the Catholic bishops warned that the church would not recognise the legitimacy of the elections unless the irregularities were rectified. Nearly half the 60 million people in DRC are said to be Catholics.

The Washington Post Monday quoted a government employee in DRC as saying that “everything has been positioned for Kabila to win. We Catholics are going to abstain.”

Ecumenical News International, a news service focusing primarily on religion, reported Thursday that the All-Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) has publicly supported the elections despite calls for a boycott.

“The reports we are getting from our member churches indicate the process has gone fairly well,” Bright Mawudor of the AACC was quoted as saying. “Those politicians expressing doubts are raising a red herring.”

William Lacy Swing, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in DRC, called the proposed boycott “untimely.”

He also said that tremendous progress has been achieved in preparing for the election and that the DRC “is arguably the only sub-region in Africa that has always lacked any centre of political stability and because of the size of this country, with nine neighbours, it is the only country that can give it that stability.”

Meanwhile, there were reports out of the DRC capital that the proposed boycott has been called off.