Related: Camping Out in the Congo
Time to fold up the Globe tent.
"Violence, late ballots slow Congo vote" November 29, 2011|Associated Press
KINSHASA, Congo - Voting materials arrived late or sometimes not at all in precincts throughout Congo yesterday, but elections went ahead, raising doubts about the legitimacy of a poll that already has seen at least nine people killed and could drag this enormous nation back into conflict.
Country experts and opposition leaders had urged the government to delay the vote due to massive logistical problems. Some districts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has suffered decades of dictatorship and two civil wars, are so remote that ballot boxes had to be transported across muddy trails on the heads of porters, and by dugout canoe across churning rivers....
Voting centers were forced to open late, and some didn’t open....
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"Congo struggles to get ballots to voters in historic election" December 01, 2011|By Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press
KINSHASA, Congo - In Africa, it is difficult to pull off a transparent election even in countries that have held them regularly. This is only the third one in Congo’s 51 years of existence. The country straddles the belly of the continent, stretching out over an area the size of the United States east of the Mississippi. Only 2 percent of its roads are paved.
Its polling stations are located on the flanks of mountains inhabited by gorillas; on the banks of rivers where the only mode of transport is by canoe; on islands in the middle of lakes; and deep in rain forests still controlled by rebel armies.
The government missed nearly every deadline leading up to the election. It did not print enough ballots. Those that were printed were not delivered in time, forcing hundreds of polling stations to open late. Some did not open at all, a combustible mix in a country whose back-to-back wars dragged in at least nine neighboring nations....
Congo’s body temperature is rising, and already three of the 11 presidential candidates have called for the vote to be annulled. In pockets across the country, poll workers have been attacked, trucks transporting ballots have been ransacked, and vote centers set on fire. Riot police used tear gas against angry mobs in the capital....
The vote that began Monday was supposed to mark another step toward peace, but if the results are not accepted by the population, analysts fear it could drag Congo back into conflict. The government decided to hold the vote despite the obvious technical glitches because incumbent President Joseph Kabila’s term expires next week....
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"Incumbent takes lead over opposition in early Congo presidential poll results" December 03, 2011|Associated Press
KINSHASA, Congo - Preliminary results from Congo’s presidential election show incumbent Joseph Kabila leading opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, although the country’s election chief warned only a small percentage of precincts had been counted....
Young Tshisekedi supporters also weaved between cars at downtown intersections, selling a $1 sheet showing a different set of provisional results that had their choice of president in the lead. Congo remains on edge after days of violence that left at least 18 dead and seriously wounded 100 more, with most of the deaths caused by troops loyal to Kabila, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
The violence peaked last Saturday when tens of thousands of people descended on Kinshasa’s airport to welcome home Tshisekedi as he returned from his final campaign tour in the country’s interior. In the government crackdown that followed, at least 14 people were killed, according to the report by the New York-based rights group.
Soldiers fired into the crowd, hitting a 27-year-old mother of five in the head. Among the other victims was a 22-year-old who was shot dead while walking outside a granary near the airport. On Election Day, mobs descended on poling stations. Poll workers were beaten, and vote centers were destroyed.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende denied the accusations in the report, saying the presidential guard shot in the air.
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"Fear rises as Congo awaits vote result; Violence might erupt if president wins reelection" December 09, 2011|By Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press
KINSHASA, Congo - After days of tension in Congo’s capital as the nation awaits election results, traffic began to flow once more, women selling cassava leaves took up their usual positions on the sides of roads, and a few international airlines allowed their planes to resume flights to Kinshasa yesterday.
But anxiety remained high that the Central African nation stretching over a territory as large as Western Europe would descend into violence, with supporters of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi vowing to take to the streets if President Joseph Kabila is declared the winner.
Outside the headquarters of Tshisekedi’s party, police fired tear gas and live rounds to push back the agitated crowd earlier in the day, witnesses said.
Victory seemed certain for the incumbent based on partial returns. Those results, representing 90 percent of the vote cast, gave Kabila a more than 14-point lead over Tshisekedi, who had 34 percent. In the capital’s best hotel, Kabila’s party had rented a ballroom and his supporters wearing T-shirts printed with his photograph were already holding a victory celebration before the election commission had named the winner.
Instead of issuing results as promised yesterday, the country’s election commission chief called a hasty news conference to announce another one-day postponement. “We need to double-check the results,’’ Daniel Ngoy Mulunda said late yesterday. “We are before a very demanding public.’’
A spokesman for Tshisekedi’s party continued to say that Tshisekedi had won and appealed to supporters to fight for their victory.
“We call on the Congolese people to mobilize themselves so as to protect this victory. Each person can do this in their own way, and in the manner that they see fit so that it will be felt everywhere, especially by this dictatorship which wants to impose a verdict based on cheating and on electoral fraud,’’ said Jacquemain Shabani, the secretary general of Tshisekedi’s party.
Kind of like an AmeriKan election.
The election was marred from the start by massive technical shortcomings, from the late delivery of ballots to the chaotic tabulation centers where ballots were being dumped by the millions. There were not enough computers for poll workers to enter the data. Frequent power cuts plunged counting centers into darkness. The election commission failed to meet its Tuesday deadline for releasing results. They announced a 48-hour extension, which has now turned into a 72-hour one.
Kinshasa residents continued to cross the river separating Congo’s capital from Brazzaville, the capital of the smaller Republic of Congo, Congo’s northern neighbor.
Bobette Nzeuzi, a mother of two was among those waiting to cross the river swirling with eddies. She held her 5-month-old daughter, while her 7-year-old sat next to her.
“The city is in trouble. My entire neighborhood has emptied out,’’ she said as she waited for the boat to leave. “I wanted to leave earlier, but we had to wait for my husband to get paid.’’
Although international observers said the vote was flawed, they have stopped short of calling it fraudulent. Most say the irregularities were not widespread enough to change the outcome.
Then that is that, isn't it?
However, the perception among opposition supporters is that Tshisekedi won, setting the stage for confrontation.
Cui bono?
Diplomats, who have met the 78-year-old Tshisekedi in recent days in an attempt to persuade him to not incite his supporters to violence, said that the candidate is certain of his victory.
A Western diplomat who asked not to be named said: “There’s a real disconnect. On the one hand he says, ‘Obviously, I will respect the will of the ballot box - but I won.’ ’’
The impasse has led some analysts to say that the provisional results should not be published yet, and that instead steps need to be taken to create transparency. For example, foreign embassies and international observation missions have impressed on election officials the need to publish results by polling station.
So far, the results issued by the electoral commission have been aggregated by province, making it impossible for political parties to check whether the vote count they witness inside a specific polling place was correctly tabulated at the regional level.
“A week after presidential and legislative polls, the Democratic Republic of Congo faces a political crisis that could plunge it back into major violence,’’ according to a statement from the International Crisis Group.
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"Kabila declared winner of Congo presidential election; International observers view vote as flawed" December 10, 2011|By Adam Nossiter, New York Times
KINSHASA, Congo - Columns of black smoke from burning tires rose over parts of this dilapidated capital yesterday as Joseph Kabila, the incumbent president, was declared the official winner of Congo’s troubled election, defeating his nearest rival by more than 15 percentage points in an outcome many here feared would stoke new spasms of political violence.
The vote was considered flawed, perhaps severely, by international observers, and Kabila is not popular in Kinshasa, a city of nearly 10 million where he lost the vote. All over the sprawling metropolis yesterday afternoon, the streets were lined by glum and silent supporters of the man who finished second in the national count, veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi.
In interviews many said they felt the vote was stolen.
Do I ever know that feeling.
The silence was punctuated by occasional gunshots as cruising police, guns pointing out from their patrol vehicles, fired in the air to disperse the crowds.
Tshisekedi had already rejected the preliminary results, saying the election was fraudulent, and yesterday afternoon a spokesman said that the opposition leader considered himself the rightfully elected president - a hint of possible trouble to come.
“He’s said he considers himself the elected president of the Democratic Republic of Congo,’’ Albert Moleka, Tshisekedi’s chief of staff, said yesterday....
The announcement by Congo’s electoral commission was not unexpected and was greeted by blaring car horns from supporters of Kabila in the heavily guarded downtown district. The commission credited Kabila with nearly 49 percent to Tshisekedi’s 32 percent. Kabila has been in power since 2001 when he took over from his assassinated rebel-leader father Laurent, and was first elected in 2006.
Since then, however, there has been “growing disaffection’’ with his rule, International Crisis Group wrote in May, as the country remains stuck at the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index and 50 percent of the population in the Western-Europe sized country is consider undernourished.
Well before the Nov. 28 vote though, Kabila had taken steps that the Crisis Group and other observers suggested might lead to suspicion that he was easing his path to reelection - eliminating a second round of voting, in a change to the constitution earlier this year, for instance, and through his party appointing a majority of the electoral commission, which is also headed by a close ally of the president.
Combined with a vote described this week by Crisis Group this week as “chaotic,’’ “unruly,’’ and “opaque,’’ the stage appeared set for further disorder....
Tshisekedi has delivered veiled warnings that he might call out his followers - he calls them his “fighters’’ - into the streets, to contest the election, which was held more than a week ago. Already at least 18 have been killed in violence associated with a calamitous vote seen by foreign observers as badly mismanaged by the electoral authorities in Congo, which administered 63,000 polling stations in the sprawling country
The observers have said there were serious procedural difficulties, including polling stations that did not open, missing ballots, and sacks of ballots that arrived late, were left in the mud, and may not have been counted. Most observers have stopped short of calling the vote fraudulent, although some say the flaws in the whole electoral process were so manifest the vote for Kabila was discredited anyway.
“He may have won from a legal standpoint, but he certainly did not win it legitimately,’’ said Theodore Trefon, a Congo specialist at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Belgium, the former colonial power.
The former colonial power that murdered millions as it made the Congo into a slave labor camp?
“The election is not credible,’’ said Trefon, author of the recently published book “Congo Masquerade.’’ “There is sufficient evidence from international observers. We know Kabila cheated. It’s not a question of percentages.’’
I'm still waiting for one that is.
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"Congo’s president defends reelection" December 13, 2011|By Adam Nossiter, New York Times
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo - Rejecting widespread criticism of the recent presidential election, the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, asserted yesterday that there was no reason to doubt that he had been fairly reelected.
In a rare meeting with the media, Kabila dismissed a weekend report by the Carter Center that called the election not credible because of tens of thousands of missing votes and unrealistically high percentages for Kabila.
Uh-oh.
To reporters summoned to a serene riverside residence here, in a leafy district well away from the capital’s muddy streets and falling-down bungalows, Kabila calmly brushed off both the challenge from the Carter Center and from his leading opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi, who has also declared himself president.
“The credibility of these elections cannot be put in doubt,’’ Kabila said, adding that he was “definitely not concerned’’ about findings by the Carter Center, for instance, that in some districts he had won virtually 100 percent of the vote.
Really?
“I don’t want to go into the details of who voted,’’ Kabila said. “Am I uncomfortable with the results? No, not at all.’’
Late Saturday, in the strongest expression so far of growing doubts among observers about the honesty of the Nov. 28 vote in one of the world’s top minerals-producing nations, the Carter Center alleged “serious irregularities’’ and “mismanagement’’ of results, saying it could not vouch for “the degree to which they reflect the will of the Congolese people.’’
That's why it is a concern to the West; therefore, the reading on this must be that they are anti-Kabila at the moment, but don't want to be too pushy because they still want access to all the earthly riches.
But Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, pushed aside these criticisms, instead suggesting that the Carter Center, a US good-government group, had itself overstepped boundaries....
Shortly afterward, the Catholic archbishop of Kinshasa, Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, echoed the Carter Center statement, saying official election results “do not conform either to truth or to justice.’’ During the vote, the Catholic Church deployed thousands of electoral observers all over the vast central African nation of 70 million, which is the size of Western Europe.
Other entities, including the European Union and the United States, have so far been largely silent about the vote. Western companies have substantial mining interests here, and Tshisekedi, with a lifetime of radical-sounding statements, is not popular in overseas foreign ministries.
Translation: The West wants him to shut up.
What happens next in the electoral standoff is unclear. Tshisekedi’s side has called for demonstrations to protest the proclamation of Kabila’s reelection. Yesterday Kinshasa appeared to be returning to normal after a week of tension, deserted streets, and shuttered businesses. Shops were open; the city’s monstrous traffic jams had resumed.
Kabila said there was no crisis in the country. He was dismissive of the longtime opposition leader’s objections.
“I thought he was going to call me to congratulate me,’’ he said, smiling. But he issued a veiled warning to Tshisekedi: “We’ll call on him to respect the laws of the land.’’
He also brushed aside questions about widely reported government corruption.
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Time to brush aside the Globe.
