Congo scrambles to organise first polls in 40 years
Jan 04, 2006
THE outboard motor strains and water threatens to pour in with every wobble of the dugout canoe ferrying 15 election workers, voting kits and a mountain of food steadily along the vast, brown Congo river.
THE outboard motor strains and water threatens to pour in with every wobble of the dugout canoe ferrying 15 election workers, voting kits and a mountain of food steadily along the vast, brown Congo river.
Hours later and 65km (40 miles) further downstream, the team arrive in Maita, a remote jungle village. Maita is a little more than a collection of huts. On December 18, thousands of people paddled to take part in a referendum on a new constitution, Congo’s first national democratic election in more than 40 years. The new post-war constitution was carried by a massive majority.
UN and Congolese officials flew to remote towns, plying long stretches of river, bumping down rutted roads and hiking through thick forests trying to open some 40,000 similar voting “offices†across Africa’s third largest country on time. “This is a nightmare — it is the first time we had ever done something like this,†said Gini Ehungu, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission in Equateur Province, an area the size of France with just 65km (40 miles) of paved roads.
The referendum, to decide whether to accept a constitution, is the first step in a lengthy, costly and ambitious process of rebuilding a country that has little experience of democracy in its long history of dictatorship, war and chaos.
Some 24 million people registered to vote in the referendum and the subsequent local, parliamentary and presidential elections, which according to a 2003 peace accord must be completed by June 2006.
Successful elections are seen as the key to consolidating peace in the mineral-rich country, where nearly four million people have been killed by war-related hunger and disease since 1998. Added to the lack of basic infrastructure and vast distances, thousands of gunmen still roam the hills of eastern Congo, targeting civilians and looting villages, despite efforts by UN peacekeepers and government soldiers to control them.
Peacekeepers have had to be pulled off military operations to assist with transporting electoral equipment, but even so, some kits used to register voters were sent off into the jungle never to be seen again and funds coming via the UN administration were delayed.
As a result, voter registration that was supposed to take three weeks in Equateur continued three months after it began, closing just days before the referendum. Officials face problems more complicated than just getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time.
With little experience of democratic elections, few Congolese are aware of what the process entails. The election team making its way to Maita slowed down at the riverside villages along the way, encouraging families to vote.
“Who are we voting for?†many of the fishermen shouted back in the local language, Lingala. Diplomats and analysts say many Congolese registered for the poll as much to collect a free identification card as to vote.
Debates about the constitution and the wider Congolese political scene are broadcast on the numerous radio and television stations across the country, but priorities are different in the more isolated areas where lack of understanding of the process can engender fear among the locals. “If we do not have an electoral card, we will be arrested and we must vote,†says Dominique, a fisherman in Mbandaka.
There is growing speculation that voters may reject the constitution in protest at the former belligerents, political opposition and other representatives in the government that has run the Congo for the last two and a half years. After decades of suffering and negotiations, there is hope that Congo may be, at last, on the road to peace.
“The best scenario is that people vote “Yes†and we learn lessons for the next stage in sorting out this fragile and complicated mess,†a Western diplomat said.
Hours later and 65km (40 miles) further downstream, the team arrive in Maita, a remote jungle village. Maita is a little more than a collection of huts. On December 18, thousands of people paddled to take part in a referendum on a new constitution, Congo’s first national democratic election in more than 40 years. The new post-war constitution was carried by a massive majority.
UN and Congolese officials flew to remote towns, plying long stretches of river, bumping down rutted roads and hiking through thick forests trying to open some 40,000 similar voting “offices†across Africa’s third largest country on time. “This is a nightmare — it is the first time we had ever done something like this,†said Gini Ehungu, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission in Equateur Province, an area the size of France with just 65km (40 miles) of paved roads.
The referendum, to decide whether to accept a constitution, is the first step in a lengthy, costly and ambitious process of rebuilding a country that has little experience of democracy in its long history of dictatorship, war and chaos.
Some 24 million people registered to vote in the referendum and the subsequent local, parliamentary and presidential elections, which according to a 2003 peace accord must be completed by June 2006.
Successful elections are seen as the key to consolidating peace in the mineral-rich country, where nearly four million people have been killed by war-related hunger and disease since 1998. Added to the lack of basic infrastructure and vast distances, thousands of gunmen still roam the hills of eastern Congo, targeting civilians and looting villages, despite efforts by UN peacekeepers and government soldiers to control them.
Peacekeepers have had to be pulled off military operations to assist with transporting electoral equipment, but even so, some kits used to register voters were sent off into the jungle never to be seen again and funds coming via the UN administration were delayed.
As a result, voter registration that was supposed to take three weeks in Equateur continued three months after it began, closing just days before the referendum. Officials face problems more complicated than just getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time.
With little experience of democratic elections, few Congolese are aware of what the process entails. The election team making its way to Maita slowed down at the riverside villages along the way, encouraging families to vote.
“Who are we voting for?†many of the fishermen shouted back in the local language, Lingala. Diplomats and analysts say many Congolese registered for the poll as much to collect a free identification card as to vote.
Debates about the constitution and the wider Congolese political scene are broadcast on the numerous radio and television stations across the country, but priorities are different in the more isolated areas where lack of understanding of the process can engender fear among the locals. “If we do not have an electoral card, we will be arrested and we must vote,†says Dominique, a fisherman in Mbandaka.
There is growing speculation that voters may reject the constitution in protest at the former belligerents, political opposition and other representatives in the government that has run the Congo for the last two and a half years. After decades of suffering and negotiations, there is hope that Congo may be, at last, on the road to peace.
“The best scenario is that people vote “Yes†and we learn lessons for the next stage in sorting out this fragile and complicated mess,†a Western diplomat said.