Elections in Congo

The turnout for elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo was massive, according to media reports, even in the eastern provinces where conditions are still tense, and violence and armed conflicts still frequent, despite the fact that a formal peace agreement was signed four years ago.

More than 9,700 candidates are running for 500 seats in parliament and 32 candidates are vying for the presidency. There will only be one round of voting for parliament, so in big election districts like Kin shasa, the capital, a candidate with 1 percent of the vote who leads all the rest could win a seat.

There will be two rounds of voting for president. The current president, Joseph Kabila, is the favorite to win. He took over after his father, Laurent Désiré Kabila, was assassinated in 2001.

It will take more than three weeks to count the vote. A second round in the presidential election, if needed, is tentatively scheduled for October.

The wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1997 to 2002 cost between 2 and 4 million lives—the bloodiest conflict since World War II—and completely destroyed whatever infrastructure was left after Mobuto Sese Seko ran the country from 1965 through 1997.

Mobuto was installed with the connivance of the United States, Belgium and France after they engineered the assassination of the last popularly elected president, Patrice Lumumba.

The vast wealth that Congo’s minerals generate has been siphoned by these imperialist powers, rather than for roads and health care and education. As a result, today Congo has less than 200 miles of roads outside its cities, which is why ballots for this election, and all the election equipment like ballot boxes and voting lists, had to be transported by air.

The United Nations has 17,000 troops in the Congo—backed by 2,000 or so troops from the European Union. The UN also has 1,000 election observers there and estimates that it will spend more than $400 million on this vote.

More than 90 percent of the population of Congo lives on less than $1 a day.