Congo prepares for historic election

Congo, the massive nation at the heart of the world’s poorest continent, chooses a new president tomorrow in the first multi-party elections since independence nearly half a century ago.

It is a monumental exercise in democracy that many hope will end decades of dictatorship, war and corruption.

With ex-rebel leaders who once governed massive chunks of the nation as private fiefdoms running against a young incumbent who brought them into the government to end years of fighting, there is much at stake in the vote that puts Congo at the crossroads of continued conflict or peace.

Tensions are running high and dozens have died in election-related violence that saw rampaging mobs clash with riot police in the capital, Kinshasa, and shootings in the east that forced one parliamentary candidate to flee the country.

In the central city of Mbuji Mayi today, opposition militants attacked a truck carrying voting materials, setting it ablaze as they shouted “nobody is going to vote!” and stoned police who fired tear gas.

The half-billion dollar enterprise supported by the UN is the world body’s biggest ever, safeguarded by the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world.

The European Union has also sent a 2,000-strong contingent to Congo and the region to secure the vote. An unmanned Belgian reconnaissance plane crashed yesterday in Kinshasa, injuring five people, a spokesman for the force said.

Security and development have been the top issues in the run-up to the first multiparty elections since independence in 1960. In a nation the size of western Europe with only 1,000km (600 miles) of paved roads, candidates are trying to channel Congolese anger.

“I have a vision for Congo. I want highways from north to south, from east to west. I want universities in the capital of each province,” President Joseph Kabila, considered a front-runner in a field of 33 presidential aspirants, told thousands of supporters yesterday. “I want to improve the situation of the people.”

That’s the hope, too, for the 25 million registered voters among the 58 million people in Congo, one of the world’s poorest nations despite huge natural resources.

Despite the end to fighting in 2002, the east remains violent and the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises: Aid groups say 1,000 people are dying needless deaths each day, most from strife-induced hunger and disease.

UN troops and Congo army regulars still battle militia fighters, although the three main militia groups in Ituri province have promised to lay down arms to allow the vote to go ahead – a bright spot in a bitter, month-long campaign period that saw more than 30 politically related deaths nationwide.

Congolese hope a legitimate leader can plaster over the country’s divisions by boosting the economy and knitting together security forces that at the moment remain factionalised and loyal to individual leaders, not to the state.

“We need peace, development, justice and no more corruption. We’re fed up,” said Jean-Pierre Ifoma, a father of eight who like many Congolese is unemployed.

After years of graft-ridden and heavy-handed rule, a free and fair vote alone is unlikely to steer all Congolese away from the gun. A new leader will have to deliver on promises of betterment – and not just to loyalists and ethnic kinsmen.

“For us Congolese, we’ll take up arms again because we’re against dictatorship,” Ifoma said in Congo’s decrepit and trash-strewn capital, Kinshasa.

Congo fell into strife almost immediately after it shook off Belgian colonialism in 1960.

Decades of civil wars, army looting sprees and coups d’etat followed, with the corrupt, US-backed Cold War-era strongman Mobutu Sese Seko at the helm.

A Rwandan-backed rebellion by Kabila’s father, Laurent, chased Mobutu from power in 1997 but a fresh insurgency led by Rwanda brewed against him the following year, divvying up the country into swathes controlled by warlords and drawing in the armies of more than half a dozen African nations.

Kabila took power after his father’s palace assassination in 2001 and negotiated an official end to the war a year later via a transitional government that made rebel leaders vice presidents. The peace bid is a major selling point for the 35-year-old leader.

Among Kabila’s opponents are two of his four vice presidents: Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former Ugandan-backed rebel leader who once controlled north-east Congo and Azarias Ruberwa, a Rwandan-backed leader who once controlled much of the east. Veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi is boycotting the vote.

Ballots for presidential and parliamentary seats are pages long and have been shipped to 49,700 polling stations around the country. Nearly 2,000 international and 46,000 Congolese election monitors will scrutinise the vote.

Counting ballots from remote jungles and villages with no roads or electricity will not be easy and first-round results may not be known for weeks. If no presidential candidate gains a majority, a run-off will follow between the top two finishers, likely to be in September.

Some Congolese, mindful of the West’s support for Mobutu and the overseas markets where minerals looted during Congo’s wars finally landed, are wary of international help.

“It’s the West that has imposed the government of Kabila on us,” said Georges Milescky Tshisekedi, a 48-year-old lottery worker in the central city of Mbuji Mayi. “And it’s the West that has organised these elections because they want Kabila in.”