Congo Greets 1st Democratic Vote in Decades With Hope and Anxiety

Eager to participate in their nation’s first democratic election in more than 40 years, would-be voters lined up recently outside a makeshift electoral center in this northeastern city.

Many brought old passports, student cards or driver’s licenses to prove their citizenship.

Mahassani Thierry Lukala, 37, had no such documentation. So instead the law student brought five friends to vouch for his identity. It worked, and Lukala left with a laminated voter card in hand.

It’s part of the compromise and creativity behind what is shaping up to be one of the most complex and expensive elections in African history.

With an estimated electorate of 28 million, the vote will be the largest ever observed by the United Nations. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, already with a $1-billion annual budget, estimates it will need $425 million more for the polling, which is likely to be held early next year.

“We are approaching a historic moment,” William Lacy Swing, the U.N.’s special representative, recently told reporters in the capital, Kinshasa. “The Congolese people are today closer to elections than they have ever been since 1960.”

The first wave of 9,000 planned registration centers began opening in mid-July, starting in Kinshasa and spreading last week to the rest of Congo’s vast territory. On election day, more than 40,000 polling stations will be needed to accommodate a nation roughly the size of Western Europe.

By comparison, Iraq’s recent election cost about $250 million and required 5,600 polling centers.

The last time Congo witnessed a democratic election was in 1960, when the Belgians handed over sovereignty after a long, bloody colonial period. But the new government quickly fell into chaos. Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in 1965 and held it until 1997.

“We had elections under Mobutu, but there was only one candidate,” said Daniel Kakule, an election controller at a registration center in Bunia.

After two years of civil strife and then a four-year war involving neighbors Rwanda and Uganda, a Congolese transitional government formed in 2003. Democratic elections were planned for June of this year, but leaders called for at least a six-month delay, citing the cost and complexity.

“It’s not an easy thing to do in this part of the country,” said Hassan Drame, the U.N. election coordinator in the northeastern region of Ituri, where the terrain ranges from dense jungle to inaccessible mountains.

In many cases, U.N. airplanes and helicopters are the only mode of transportation, helping to push logistical costs for the election to $110 million, Drame said.

Despite the efforts of election officials, some voters will have to walk as far as 31 miles to reach a polling station.

Ongoing violence is another hindrance, Drame said. The U.N. estimates that $40 million and an additional 2,600 peacekeepers will be needed to provide security for the vote. Congo already has a 16,700-troop peacekeeping mission, the U.N.’s largest.

When government leaders announced the delay, riots and protests in Kinshasa killed 10 and critics accused the government of dragging its feet in order to remain in power.

“This transition is taking too long,” said Robert Saga, who runs the Complex Sainte Terez primary school in Bunia. “If it weren’t for the international community pushing them, they wouldn’t even be holding the election. The government is doing nothing more than stealing money. Nobody is thinking about the people.”

Others interviewed at voter registration centers in Bunia said they would tolerate a postponement, but only if it was brief.

“They can delay once, but not again,” said Basila Paki, 50, a tailor. “We must have a vote by March 2006.”

A glimpse inside one registration center provides an insight into the challenge of holding an election here.

Armed guards keep watch over a line of impoverished residents, most of whom live without electricity or hot water. The newly registered voters leave the facility, an abandoned community center accessible only by foot or motorcycle, with ink-stained fingers, a practice used in underdeveloped countries to prevent election fraud.

However, election workers register voters with more than $20,000 worth of high technology. A row of new Dell laptops, equipped with optical cameras and red scanner pads, snap photos of residents and collect electronic fingerprint images. A miniature Hewlett-Packard printer, powered by a portable generator, spits out shiny voter ID cards in less than a minute.

Residents said the technology was an impressive sign that election organizers were taking the process seriously.

“If they can do this, then I have confidence that they can hold a fair election,” said Lukala, the voter who proved his citizenship with help from his friends.

International election officials caution that a successful vote won’t immediately solve the country’s problems. Elections sometimes fuel instability, particularly if there are sore losers or allegations of fraud, as seen recently in Ivory Coast and Ethiopia.

More than 200 political parties are vying for power in Congo. Several, including the party of transitional President Joseph Kabila, began a few years ago as rebel armies fighting to overturn the Mobutu dictatorship. Others are militias, sometimes backed by Rwanda and Uganda, who only recently agreed to give up their weapons.

“Nobody knows whether they will accept the results,” Drame said. “We’ll have to wait for the moment.”

In the restive northeast, two militias frequently accused of human rights abuses are now seeking to transform themselves into political parties even though their leaders are in prison. The men were arrested in February after nine Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in Ituri.

Both groups deny responsibility for the ambush and say they disarmed in April, but human rights workers say the militias continue to terrorize civilians in remote villages, away from U.N. peacekeeper camps.

Zbo Kalogi, acting president of the Bunia-based Union of Congolese Patriots, known by its French acronym UPC, said his followers would accept the election results without violence.

“If we find there is cheating in the election, we will settle it by debate, not by fighting,” he said.

Unlike the UPC, a rival militia, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, or FNI, has not been recognized by the transitional government as an official political party, sparking fears that members could take up arms again.

“We’re at the door, asking to be let in,” said Baldwin Bakambo, an FNI official. “I don’t want to speculate on what might happen if they don’t open the door. Let’s see what happens.”