DR Congo: Annan calls on presidential candidates to avoid violence as votes are counted

With provisional results in yesterday’s presidential poll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) not expected for another 10 days, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the two candidates and their supporters to avoid acts of violence at all cost after the largest and most complex elections the United Nations has ever helped organize.

“The Secretary-General is pleased that voters were able to cast their ballots in a generally free and calm environment, although he is concerned at the violent incidents that took place in Equateur province and near Bunia in Ituri district,” he said in a statement issued by his spokesman, as UN peacekeepers and European Union (EU) forces reinforced security in various regions of the vast strife-torn country.

Mr. Annan called yesterday’s signing by representatives of the two candidates, President Joseph Kabila and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, of a declaration of intent regarding their conduct after the elections “an important step in ensuring that the electoral process is successfully concluded in calm and secure conditions.”

“The Secretary-General calls on the presidential candidates and their supporters to exercise patience and restraint, and to take all possible steps to prevent any acts of violence while waiting for the results to be announced by the Independent Electoral Commission,” the statement concluded.

UN peacekeepers and EU forces continued to patrol Kinshasa, the capital and security is being strengthened in other parts of the country, including in the region of Western Kasai where two EU observers were allegedly stoned by President Kabila’s supporters, the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) reported.

It deplored the shooting deaths by Congolese soldiers of two electoral workers in the town of Fataki, an incident which prompted an angry mob to ransack 37 polling stations. The Mission said voting in that region will resume tomorrow. Yesterday’s run-off poll was needed because no candidate secured an overall majority in the first round in July.

Underscoring the logistical complexity of the three-month-long electoral process, the first democratic poll in 45, years, Mr. Annan’s Deputy Special Representative Ross Mountain noted that the UN was now assisting the collection of the results from 50,000 polling stations in the vast, with some stations a 10-day walk away from tabulation centres.

“If you look in the perspective of a country that is larger than Western Europe… [that] just over three years ago had six foreign armies fighting on it and it was partitioned, and that we had 50,000 places where people were voting yesterday… while regrettable such incidents certainly don’t harm the overall conduct of the operation,” he told UN Radio, referring to the violence.

Provincial assemblies were also elected yesterday, the closing chapter of an operation aimed at cementing the DRC’s transition from a six-year civil war, widely considered the most lethal fighting in the world since World War II, costing 4 million lives through fighting and attendant hunger and disease. Factional fighting has continued since then, particularly in the east.

Throughout the long process, in which a 500-seat National Assembly was also elected, UN agencies helped to deliver tens of millions of ballots and other supplies to the 50,000 polling stations, train 12,000 polling supervisors and plan for the safety of the 25.7 million Congolese registered to vote.