The future of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hung in the balance on Tuesday as the nation awaited the outcome of a constitutional referendum aimed at restoring democracy after decades of war and suffering.
The capital, Kinshasa, in the west of the vast Central African country was calm, with residents going about business as usual after a last-minute rush to vote on a second, extended day of a referendum that on Sunday saw its highest turnout in the provinces.
Newspapers congratulated people on their ”political maturity” and ”dignity” after the most crucial poll since the nation became independent in 1960, but some opposition dailies such as Le Phare and Le Potentiel fretted over what the first called ”a rift cutting the country between winners and losers”.
About 24,5-million people were called to the polls to say ”yes” or ”no” to a draft Constitution already approved by a transitional Parliament, which would create a political landscape with a new balance of power between president and government and a decentralisation of decision-making in 25 new provinces.
The media picked up on the few details so far released by the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), which has put the turnout at more than 60% and said, like independent observers, that apart from a late start in many areas the voting went remarkably well.
Residents of Kinshasa, however, had little to say about the Constitution, which if passed would open the way for elections by the end of June next year for a president and a new bicameral Parliament, each for five years, and bring a democracy unknown since independence from Belgium.
Some newspapers hoped to see the results issued by the CEI on Tuesday evening. In their absence, l’Observateur thought ”the toughest part is over” and the ”patriotic act [of voting] is a forecast for the rest of the electoral process”.
Le Forum des As said the opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) of political veteran Etienne Tshisekedi, who wanted a boycott of the poll, had ”taken its third defeat” after similar failures during the census and bids to mount demonstrations.
Le Phare still reckoned that ”a huge ‘yes’ in the east and a frank ‘no’ in Kinshasa”, with a high abstention rate in Tshisekedi’s central stronghold, Mbuji-Maya in Kasai Oriental province, had divided the country.
The CEI president, Apollinaire Malu Malu, late on Monday told a news briefing: ”It’s clear it would be risky to give out figures before waiting for significant statistics,” but he could not say when.
The African Union, former colonial power Belgium, the United States and others have congratulated the country on the turnout and see it as good news for progress in a political transition that began in 2003 when President Joseph Kabila was joined in an interim government by former rebels and the political opposition.
With considerable help, including helicopters and other means of transport from the United Nations mission in the DRC (Monuc), the CEI managed to register voters and get out as many copies of the draft basic law as possible in four languages, around the country.
Monuc, including 18 600 troops, civilians and police, is the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world.
Since key peace accords were signed in South Africa in December 2002, it has established itself across the DRC, including the volatile east, which was held during the 1998-2003 war by rebels who want a ”yes” vote as much as Kabila.
That conflict drew in the armies of half-a-dozen other African countries on rival sides in the mineral-rich and thus potentially lucrative DRC, and claimed an estimated three million lives either directly or because of hunger and sickness.
Faced with fighting and a lack of roads and other infrastructure left to rot during decades of autocratic and corrupt rule, relief workers could not reach many in need of help.
Just before the referendum, Kabila took his ”yes” vote campaign to the eastern border region and made a symbolic pledge to move his offices there in order to help bring peace and development. — Sapa-AFP