CONGOLESE VOTERS yesterday braved torrential rain and the threat of unrest to participate in the country’s second elections since the end of a war that claimed the lives of over five million people.
A thunderstorm overnight and heavy rains the following morning had raised fears the ballot may be called off at the last minute, but voting went ahead amid claims of electoral irregularities.
The streets of the capital, Kinshasa, were deserted but calm following outbreaks of violence, including the fatal shooting of an opposition MP, in the run-up to polling day. Violence erupted at four voting stations in Congo’s southern belt. Masked gunmen attacked a station in the mining province of Katanga before three of them were killed by security forces.
Three polling stations in the neighbouring opposition stronghold of West Kasai were burnt down and an election observer seriously injured.
Kinshasa’s rutted roads are lined with massive billboards featuring incumbent president Joseph Kabila with the slogan “100 per cent for the president” and pictures of new infrastructure projects, most of which are being built by the Chinese.
Mr Kabila, who was propelled to power when his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001, and later won the 2006 election, is competing against 10 others while more than 18,500 candidates, among them pop stars and a rebel leader accused of ordering the rape of hundreds of women in eastern Congo last year, are running for 500 parliamentary seats. Kabila’s main rival is elder statesman Etienne Tshisekedi, lauded by supporters as something akin to a Congolese Nelson Mandela, who is running for the presidency for the first time.
“We need a change and Tshisekedi is a good man, an honest man,” said Joseph, a retired civil servant, after he had cast his vote at a polling station in southern Kinshasa where voters scrutinised huge ballot papers containing so many pages they resembled newspapers. “Kabila has not done enough for the country and many believe his priority is to enrich himself and his own people.” The challenges ahead for whoever takes charge in a country that is almost the size of western Europe and has a population exceeding 70 million are immense.
Earlier this month the UN designated Congo as the least developed country in the world. A mere 9 per cent of its people have intermittent access to electricity and GDP per person is today half of what it was when Congo became independent in 1960.
There is much trepidation over what may transpire between election day and December 6th, when the results are due to be declared. Yesterday evening, The Irish Times witnessed crowds of rowdy Tshisekedi supporters massing on a main road in southern Kinshasa as riot police, some in armoured vehicles, assembled nearby. Earlier, pro-Tshisekedi voters gathered in a café said they believed Mr Kabila would do anything to rig the election. “We know Tshisekedi has the support of the majority of Congolese,” one man said. “If he is not allowed to win in a free election, there will be trouble.”