Annan’s Special Representative calls for calm during vote count in DR Congo

Two days after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) held its first free and fair elections in 45 years, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to that country, William Lacy Swing, called on Congolese to remain calm and patient during the ballot counting process.

At the same time, the UN mission there hailed what it called “the successful holding of elections” even as it condemned isolated incidents of voter intimidation and “irresponsible” actions by certain local media outlets.

According to the UN mission, known as MONUC, ballot counting has been completed at the majority of 50,000 polling stations, and results continue to reach the 62 computation centres throughout the vast country. It may take up to three weeks to complete the final tabulation.

The process is experiencing some delays, due to poor road conditions and lack of necessary equipment at computation centres in the capital Kinshasa and in the provinces of Bas-Congo, Ituri, and southern Katanga, MONUC said.

The mission hailed Sunday’s largely peaceful elections, in which millions of voters chose from among 32 candidates for president and more than 9,000 candidates for the National Assembly. It said the Congolese people deserved the most credit for the successful outcome.

At the same time, however, the mission condemned “the intimidations and threats exerted on certain voters by the boycotting of the elections, as well as all the attempts and other irregularities deliberately made by certain candidates or political party militants.” It also deplored “the attitude of certain media based in Kinshasa who, through the contempt of the rules and objectives of the profession, behaved in an irresponsible way.”

MONUC encouraged all concerned to allow the electoral process to continue “in the best possible way,” particularly in relation to the verification and acceptance of the results.

Meanwhile, the International Committee for Support to the Transition, known as CIAT, held a special session today to examine whether some media outlets and political actors were exploiting the incomplete election results for their own benefit.

CIAT also joined in today’s declaration of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the Congolese Government authority on media, reiterating that publication of provisional election results was the exclusive responsibility of the IEC. It encouraged the IEC to keep the Congolese public informed regarding progress in consolidating the election results.

The CIAT is composed of the five permanent members of the Security Council (China, USA, France, Great Britain and Russia), Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Angola, Gabon, Zambia, the European Union (Commission and Presidency), the African Union (Commission and Presidency) and MONUC.