Voters in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were still going to polling stations on Monday for the second day of a poll where most politicians hope they will approve a new, post-war Constitution.
In the 11 provinces of the vast Central African country, people were voting in places ”where it wasn’t possible to deal with the long queues on Sunday”, an official with the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) said.
The referendum, which has already been passed by an interim Parliament, is a key step in restoring peace and democracy to a country that began emerging from its last devastating conflict in 2003, and should pave the way for elections.
The polling stations that reopened on Monday because of a very high turnout were to be closed at 2pm, ”the time from when the vote count will start, with the immediate posting of results on the spot”, CEI president Apollinaire Malu Malu said.
The capital, Kinshasa, in the west is more than 1 300km from the big towns on the DRC’s volatile eastern borders, which means there are two time zones with an hour’s difference. Kinshasa’s 2pm is 1pm GMT.
Malu Malu said those unable to vote during the high turnout on Sunday, which followed a mammoth operation to register about 24,5-million people in a nation with few roads and battered infrastructure, could ”go to any polling station still open today”.
President Joseph Kabila and former rebels, once backed by neighbouring nations, who have been part of his transitional government since 2003 are very keen on a ”yes” vote, as is the CEI. Belgium, the former colonial power, said to do otherwise would be ”collective suicide”.
The vote is the first of real significance since independence in 1960 for a nation rich in precious minerals and other natural resources that has endured a long, thieving dictatorship, two recent wars and considerable foreign interference.
The world’s biggest United Nations peacekeeping force of 18 600 troops, civilians and police has been helping the transitions that begun on the basis of first peace accords in 2002, and Sunday’s poll went smoothly and well, according to electoral officials and observers.
But 35 000 of 40 000 planned polling stations opened and a lot of them got off to a late start, so the vote was extended into Monday.
The proposed Constitution provides for a president elected by universal suffrage for a once-renewable five-year term, with a bicameral Parliament whose members will also have five-year mandates.
A number of small but vociferous political opposition parties have formed a de facto coalition of ”no” campaigners. They object mainly to what they say are insufficient parliamentary powers and plans to give the country 25 largely autonomous provinces, plus a federal capital territory.
Political analysts warn that a ”no” vote could be a catastrophic setback on the path to democracy in the former Zaire, because at its worst, it could mean a renegotiation from scratch of power-sharing arrangements and peace deals that led to the withdrawal of troops from half-a-dozen African countries that got embroiled in the 1998-2003 war. — Sapa-AFP