A senior United Nations official on Wednesday called on politicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) not to disappoint the Congolese people during presidential and general elections on June 18.
”The Congolese people have very high expectations for democratic elections,” said Jean-Marie Guehenno, deputy UN secretary general, at a news conference. ”There is a great hope and at the same time we can clearly see that things could go wrong, and it’s everyone’s responsibility for the elections to go well,” Guehenno said as two
major parties had still not decided if they would take part in the elections, citing political discrimination.
He reiterated a UN demand for a reserve European Union force to help with security at the first free vote since the vast Central African nation’s independence from Belgium in 1961.
He underlined that the United Nations had in the DRC deployed its ”most important peacekeeping operation in the world, with a force of 17 000 men, which remains small compared with the size of the country”.
The DRC, formerly known as Zaire, is slowly making a UN-supervised transition towards democracy after a war in which about four million people have died since 1998 and 1,6-million others have been left homeless.
Guehenno, who briefly met with South African President Thabo Mbeki in Kinshasa, ended a 10-day visit to the DRC on Wednesday. – Sapa-AFP