The Republic of Congo heads into a second round of voting on Sunday, but many there are wary of electoral chaos and the fact that their lives aren’t improving much, despite their country pumping out billions of ÂÂdollars from oil every year.
The remaining 84 seats in Congo’s 137-seat Parliament will be fought over after a first round of voting in late June gave President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s Congolese Labour Party a huge victory and a further stranglehold on his rule.
In power since he seized the presidency with his Angolan-backed militia fighters in 1997, Sassou-Nguesso looks set for another long stint in power. He first ran the country from 1979 to 1992 as a general in the army.
Such was the chaos in the first round of elections that polls in seveÂÂral constituencies had to be re-run, days or weeks later. A Congolese observer group, the Supporting Coordinators for the Electoral Process, described the election as a ”failure”.
It said candidates close to the president had unfair advantages during campaigning. Children were allowed to vote and the dead figured on the voter registration lists. ”The posiÂÂtive aspect noted … was the lack of violence despite the disorganisation and the chaos that has reigned since the process began,” it said in its report.
Improvements have been reported in the lead-up to the run-off vote for the remaining seats, but apathy is tangible.
”The fact we are having elections can’t be bad,” sighs Anne Clara Blanche, a flip-flop seller in Brazzaville’s Moungali market. ”But we need to see things get better. There are lots of unemployed. Even those who finish school can’t get jobs.
”We have oil so we must be rich. But I can’t see any of it,” she adds, pointing to the dirty, plastic bag-strewn surroundings.
Congo, not to be confused with its larger neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is yet another country in Africa where millions of barrels of oil are sold every year, but tangible improvements in living standards remain elusive. Last year the country sold more than $3-billion of oil but over half the country’s four million people still live in poverty.
”The social situation is getting worse. We don’t understand how this can happen when oil prices have been up,” says Roger Bouka-Owoko, the head of the Congolese Human Rights Observatory. ”Has the money helped the social sector or helped run their big offices?”
The lack of foreign scrutiny of Congo’s elections, coupled with high-profile rows over such things as the extravagance of the president’s son’s shopping sprees and the sub-human treatment of Pygmies, who were recently lodged at the zoo, rather than a hotel, when invited to a music festival, is leading to growing frustration.
”In democratic governance, we have gone backwards,” Bouka-Owoko says. ”The international community has done nothing. They are allowing Congo down the non-democratic path and this is irresponsible.”
So far, there has been no social unrest. Many put this down to the deals the president has struck with the unions, effectively banning labour movements while the country is being rebuilt after the 1998-1999 civil war.
However, Sassou-Nguesso, who came to power by force in 1997, has himself faced several rebellions. The only remaining group that is still in the bush after the end of the civil war is the National Resistance Council (CNR), a collection of dreadlocked fighters commonly known as the ”Ninjas”. They are primarily from the southern part of the country, where the people say they have been marginalised by a northern-dominated government.
CNR leader Pastor Frederic Ntoumi ordered his men to put down their weapons earlier this year and has since taken up a job as a junior minister. He has not yet returned to the capital after a decade in the bush but he vows to do so soon. ”Then we will link up with the opposition — maybe they will start listening to us,” says a spokesperson.