DR Congo: UN envoy reminds voters to pay attention to results of parliamentary polls

The senior United Nations official in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today called on the Congolese to focus on the results of the recent parliamentary polls there as much as they are on the election to be president of the vast and impoverished African country.

William Lacy Swing, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the DRC, told a press conference in Kinshasa that it was premature to talk about the results of the presidential race, where less than 5 per cent of the total votes have been formally counted so far by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

Mr. Swing reminded voters that the National Assembly – there were more than 9,600 candidates contesting 500 seats in the historic polls on 30 July – will have the responsibility of approving the president’s choice of prime minister and voting on the annual budget.

He also reiterated his earlier plea to the Congolese media to not publish speculative reports about the presidential polls as he said that could exacerbate social tensions.

The UN Organization Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, announced today that the official results are still expected to be released on 20 August. A run-off race between the two leading presidential candidates will be held in October if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The elections, the largest ever supported by the UN, were the first free and fair polls in the DRC in at least 45 years. Turnout was high across the country, and voting took place in relative calm, with the exception of the Kasai region, where there were some incidents, such as the burning of electoral stations and kits.

Meanwhile, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland told a press briefing in Geneva today that more than 500,000 people have become internally displaced in the DRC since the start of the year.

The rate of displacement – an average of 84,000 people each month – is three times higher than the rate during the same period last year, he said. About nine out of every 10 people displaced this year have had to move because of continuing armed conflict.

The DRC has been plagued by armed clashes between militia groups and the national armed forces in recent years, with the far east of the country the worst affected.