Polls close in landmark Congo election

People in the Democratic Republic of Congo have finished voting in an election that marks the climax of its four-year postwar transition.

A president and a rebel warlord are going head-to-head, as voters held onto hope they will soon see the end of a decade-old cycle of war and despotism that has shadowed the African country.

Forces loyal to 35-year-old President Joseph Kabila and 44-year-old Jean-Pierre Bemba – a former rebel leader who is now a vice president in a power-sharing government – battled with tanks and heavy weapons in the run-up to the election, and at least two deaths were reported yesterday.

Kabila and Bemba have promised a peaceful vote and pledged to accept the results.

“Our people are still suffering because of insecurity. We live in fear. We hope this vote will make our lives better,” said Santos Kambale, a 42-year-old civil servant who spoke in the eastern town of Goma shortly after polls opened.

In the northern town of Bumba, more than 200 Bemba supporters looted polling stations and burned ballots in reaction to rumours that officials were stuffing ballot boxes with votes for Kabila. A police commissioner said a 15-year-old boy died and another person was wounded by stray bullets when troops guarding a station there fired into the air.

Elsewhere in the same province, a UN-supported radio station reported one person was killed and three injured when naval forces shot at pro-Bemba demonstrators who were protesting alleged ballot-stuffing in Lisala.

Thousands of people in the northeast were prevented from voting by blockades set up by soldiers demanding money for passage, said Anneke Van Woudenberg of New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Congolese are eager to see their tumultuous country take its place among the continent’s modern democracies. Until a constitutional referendum last year, most people here had never voted in their lives.

“If there’s peace and stability here, you could have peace and stability in the whole Great Lakes region,” said Mluleki George, South Africa’s deputy defence minister and head of that country’s observer mission for the vote. ”This is one of the biggest countries in Africa. It can be the breadbasket for the whole central region.”

Congo has instead been a vortex of conflict. A 1998-2002 war pulled in armies from half a dozen African nations, including Rwanda, Uganda, Angola and Zimbabwe. Aid groups estimate four million died during the conflict, most from hunger and disease that accompanied the fighting.

The postwar transition has been secured by the largest UN mission in the world, a 17,600-strong force backed up for the vote by 2,500 European Union troops in Congo and Gabon.

Heavy morning rains led to light turnout in Kinshasa, and many polling stations closed late as a result. Electoral commission head Apollinaire Malu-Malu said all polling close last night.

Vote counting began across the country as polling centres shut down, and electoral workers tallied ballots by lantern and candlelight. Results are not expected for several days.

Kabila is favoured to win a five-year term. He captured 45 percent of the first round vote, compared with Bemba’s 20 percent.

As partial results of the first poll, contested by more than 30 candidates, were announced in August, fighting between the two men’s forces erupted in Kinshasa, lasting three days and killing at least 23 people.

Rich in cobalt, diamonds, copper and gold, Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and was ruled for 32 years by Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who plundered the country’s mineral wealth, pocketing billions and doing little to develop the giant nation.

Rwandan-backed rebels led by Laurent Kabila, Joseph Kabila’s father, ousted Mobutu in 1997. But Kabila fell out with Rwanda and faced a new rebellion a year later that divided his country into rival rebel-controlled fiefdoms.

Laurent Kabila was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001. His son inherited power and helped negotiate the war’s end in 2002.