The legislature officially ratified the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) new Constitution on Monday, moving the nation a step closer to elections and reconciliation after nearly four decades of dictatorship and war.
The Central African giant made the charter adopted on Friday official on Monday in a ceremony attended by Congolese leaders and international figures, including South African President Thabo Mbeki — who helped broker peace deals that ended the DRC’s 1998-2003 war.
Under the new Constitution, presidential and parliamentary elections must now be held by June next year — the DRC’s first balloting in nearly 40 years.
President Laurent Kabila promised in an address that the vote will go ahead, but didn’t make the anxiously awaited announcement of a firm date.
”The irreversible step toward elections has been taken,” said Kabila. ”This train is moving. Elections will really take place.”
During Kabila’s speech, the house frequently erupted with applause and raucous rumbling from attendees pounding on their wooden tables.
Monday’s ceremony came on the eve of the anniversary of former rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s 1997 march into the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa — a thrust that officially ended Cold War-era dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s deeply corrupt and ruinous three-decade rule.
Laurent Kabila, who became president, was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2001, thrusting his son, Joseph, into power.
The new Constitution replaces a transitional Constitution adopted in South Africa in 2002 under Mbeki’s tutelage that ended a years-long war against the younger Kabila’s government that began in 1998. Kabila now leads a power-sharing administration that includes former warring parties.
The DRC’s transitional government is trying to piece the country back together after the latest war — a conflict that aid groups say killed nearly four million people, mostly through hunger and sickness.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan welcomed the adoption of Congo’s new Constitution and looks forward to the draft being put to a popular referendum ”in the shortest possible time”, UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said in New York.
Annan urged the transitional government to continue taking concrete steps towards free and fair elections. He noted ”with satisfaction the progress made recently in technical preparations for the upcoming presidential, parliamentary and local elections”, Eckhard said.
The secretary general reiterated the UN’s commitment to assist the transitional government to develop democratic institutions and promote political and economic reforms, Eckhard said.
The new charter must be put to a national referendum within six months for popular certification. The Constitution mandates presidential elections by June 2006, and lowers the minimum age for candidates from 35 to 30 — allowing Kabila (33) to seek re-election.
The new, 226-article Constitution also gives a president up to two five-year terms in office, and promises free primary education to all children.
It sets up a system of checks and balances between the president, prime minister and parliament, and recognises all ethnic groups living in the DRC at the time of independence in June 1960.
The article on ethnicity is intended primarily for residents of Tutsi origin, who were brought mainly from neighbouring Rwanda when the DRC was a colony of Belgium. Tutsis are a minority in both the DRC and Rwanda, and have been the target of attacks for years. — Sapa-AP