Millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo voted on Sunday in the first free presidential elections since independence in 1960, and in the hope of ending a decade of invasion and civil war thought to have killed four million people.
The ballot was orderly with a steady stream of enthusiastic voters and few irregularities reported. But there is a widespread anxiety that the promise of the election bringing peace, and even laying the foundation for a new prosperity across central Africa, could be lost in conflict over the election result.
Both candidates in ballot, a run-off between the leaders in July’s first round, have wielded power and influence mainly through the barrel of a gun.
The incumbent president, Joseph Kabila (35) is favoured to win after taking 45% of the first-round vote. Kabila was installed in 2001 after the assassination of his father, Laurent, who was put in power by Rwanda’s invasion of the DRC.
Kabila’s only opponent in the run-off, Jean Pierre Bemba, a former rebel chief accused of war crimes who has served as vice-president in a transitional government since a 2002 peace deal, won 20% in July. The final results are not expected until mid-November because of the difficulties of collating votes in a country the size of western Europe but with only 320km of paved roads.
Officials with the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC, the largest in the world at 17 600 troops, say they want to see the results released as soon as possible to head off destabilising speculation, particularly in the capital, Kinshasa, where about 30 people were killed in three days of fighting after the first round.
The EU has sent 1 400 troops to Kinshasa for the vote with a second force on standby in neighbouring Gabon.
The election has divided the country along regional lines. Kabila has strong support in the east, where the war has been fought, because he is seen as having calmed the conflict through a 2002 peace agreement that brought Bemba into the government. Bemba is widely regarded in the east as a warlord with a lot of blood on his hands.
”People see that Kabila brought hope and peace to this area,” said Michel Bwinika, a pro-Kabila candidate for the provincial legislature in Goma, a town deeply affected by the war.
”People think he can do that for the whole country and bring stability and a future. They see him as willing to compromise.”
But in Kinshasa and western DRC, Kabila is derided as a foreigner because he grew up in Tanzania and does not speak the local language, Lingala, proficiently.
Bemba has said he will accept the result provided the election and count is ”transparent”. However his officials have already accused the president of unfair practices because Kabila has dominated state radio and television. Bemba’s television studios in Kinshasa were burned down in September.
Calming the eastern parts of the country after years of conflict will not be easy. Warlords have staked out territory in the hope of winning influence after the election. One of the most prominent is Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general who has served in the Rwandan army and a main Congolese rebel group. His troops are responsible for mass killings, rapes and other crimes in the Masisi region north of Goma.
Nkunda has thrown his support behind Bemba and could make serious trouble for the government if the results are contested by force.
But some Congolese politicians see Bemba and his armed allies as manoeuvring for position in the next administration. They question whether he has the desire or capability to resume the conflict, and say that Angola’s offer to send troops to back Kabila would be a serious deterrent to taking up arms again. – Guardian Unlimited Â