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DRCONGO-VOTE-LEAD
DR Congo goes to the polls after troubled odyssey
KINSHASA, Dec 30, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Voters in the Democratic Republic of Congo
went to the polls on Sunday in elections that will shape the future of their
vast, troubled country, amid fears that violence could overshadow the ballot.
Millions of electors are choosing a successor to President Joseph Kabila,
who is stepping down two years after his term limit expired — a delay that
sparked bloody clashes and revived traumatic memories of past turmoil.
The vote gives DR Congo the chance of its first peaceful transfer of power
since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.
But analysts say the threat of violence is great, given the many
organisational problems and wide-ranging suspicion of Kabila.
The election’s credibility has already been strained by repeated delays,
the risk of hitches on polling day and accusations that electronic voting
machines will produce a rigged result.
On the eve of the vote, talks between key candidates to avert post-
election violence broke down.
Opposition frontrunners Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi refused
Saturday to sign a proposed peace pledge, saying election officials had
failed to make suggested changes to the text.
The announcement came after the pair had met with the Independent National
Election Commission (CENI) as well as Kabila’s preferred successor, Emmanuel
Ramazani Shadary.
The UN, the United States and Europe have loudly appealed for the
elections to be free, fair and peaceful — a call echoed on Wednesday by the
presidents of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and the neighbouring Republic
of Congo.
– Opposition chance? –
Polling stations opened in the east of the country a little after their
scheduled time of 0400 GMT and an hour later in Kinshasa and the west.
Kabila voted in the capital along with his family, just minutes before
Shadary also cast his ballot in the same polling station.
“I feel liberated, freed,” said Victor Balibwa, a 53-year-old civil
servant and one of the first voters to cast his ballot in Lubumbashi, the
country’s mining capital in the southeast.
“I’m excited to vote, to be able to choose at last. It’s my first
election,” an 18-year-old student named Rachel told AFP in the eastern city
of Goma, an opposition stronghold.
Some polling stations opened late in Goma and elsewhere.
In one, electoral officials were still adjusting voting machines and in
another a technician needed to restart a machine that had broken down, an AFP
reporter saw.
The last polls are due to close at 1600 GMT. Provisional results are due
on January 6.
Twenty-one candidates are contending the presidential election, which is
taking place simultaneously with ballots for the national legislature and
municipal bodies.
The frontrunners include Kabila’s champion Shadary, a hardline former
interior minister facing EU sanctions for a crackdown on protesters.
His biggest rivals are Fayulu, until recently a little-known legislator
and former oil executive, and Tshisekedi, head of a veteran opposition party,
the UDPS.
If the elections are “free and fair,” an opposition candidate will almost
certainly win, according to Jason Stearns of the Congo Research Group, based
at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
Opinion polls indicate Fayulu is clear favourite, garnering around 44
percent of voting intentions, followed by 24 percent for Tshisekedi and 18
percent for Shadary, he said. However, “the potential for violence is
extremely high,” Stearns warned.
Between 43 and 63 percent of respondents said they would not accept the
results if Shadary is declared winner, he said.
And between 43 percent and 53 percent said they did not trust DRC’s courts
to settle any election dispute fairly.
However, Kabila said he was confident “everything will go well on Sunday”.
“I want to reassure our people that measures have been taken with the
government to guarantee the safety of all sides, candidates, voters and
observers alike,” he said in his end-of-year address broadcast Saturday.
– Frail giant –
Eighty times the size of its former colonial master Belgium, the DRC
covers 2.3 million square kilometres (920,000 square miles) in the middle of
Africa, behind only Algeria in area on the continent.
Gold, uranium, copper, cobalt and other riches are extracted from its
soil, but little of that wealth comes down to the poor.
In the last 22 years, the country has twice been a battleground for wars
drawing in armies from around central and southern Africa.
The legacy of that era endures today in the DRC’s eastern border region,
where ruthless militias have carried out hundreds of killings.
Insecurity and an ongoing Ebola epidemic in part of North Kivu province,
and communal violence in Yumbi, in the southwest of the country, prompted the
authorities to postpone the elections there until March.
Kabila said the vote would take place “as soon as the situation allows
it”.
Around 1.25 million people, out of a national electoral roll of 40
million, are affected.
No explanation has been offered as to whether or how the delayed vote will
affect the official outcome, and legal experts say the postponement is
unconstitutional.
BSS/AFP/RY/1422 hrs