Scheduled elections will take place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) come rain or come shine, the speaker of the national assembly promised here on Monday at the start of a special session on a new Constitution.
But Olivier Kamitatu warned against being too rigid about holding the poll before the end of June, as the opposition insists.
”The elections will take place whether it rains or snows,” said Kamitatu, opening the meeting.
The present session was taking place ”in a tense political and social context,” he said, warning what he called ”certain political players who have focused national opinion on the date June 30 as the fateful day for elections … disregarding constitutional factors”.
The main opposition party has called for elections to be held on schedule by the end of June, as foreseen under a 2002 transition accord which ended five years of civil war in the central African country.
The Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) led by Etienne Tshisekedi, a former opponent of late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, earlier this month boycotted a seminar in Kinshasa aimed at mapping out the elections, accusing organisers of seeking to delay the polls.
Under the 2002 agreement, the post-war transition period was supposed to end in June with the first free and democratic elections in the country for 40 years.
But the transition agreement permits a delay of six months for polls to be held.
Few believe the polls will take place on schedule to choose a successor to the transitional government headed by Joseph Kabila, which includes former rebels.
Parliament went on Monday into a special session to debate a new Constitution as the basis of a post-war democratic regime.
Of 500 members of the National Assembly, 325 showed up for the opening day of the new session, convened by President Joseph Kabila.
The Senate was due to begin its sitting later, while substantive parliamentary debate on the draft Constitution and other issues including the national budget for 2005 were set to start on Tuesday.
The DRC in 2003 began to emerge from a devastating war which drew in the armies of more than half a dozen other African countries and Kabila heads an interim government expected this year to hold the first free and democratic elections since independence from Belgium in 1960.
Once the draft Constitution has gone through both houses of Parliament it is due to be put to a referendum.
The end of March is the deadline for having the Constitution ready, set by a congress held this month among some of the country’s political parties and a range of professional and other interest groups. – Sapa-AFP