Chronicle Editor
Kinshasa (DRC) – Polling stations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) long-delayed election have opened, two years after they were first scheduled to be held.
Voting stations opened at 5am yesterday and were to close at 5pm.
In the capital Kinshasa the election got off to a rocky start due to torrential rain, long delays at some polling stations and broken-down machines..
After casting his vote in Bumbu municipality in the capital, Peter Ekoto (47) said that the voting procedure was straightforward.
“It was an easy process. I thought it will be a complicated but it was not. It took me less than a minute. This election is the quickest and the most smooth I have seen,” Ekoto, a humanitarian worker, said as heavy rain poured down.
More than 46 million Congolese have registered to elect the successor to President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the central African country for 17 years.
As many as 21 candidates are competing to succeed Kabila, who came to power following the assassination of his father in 2001.
The outgoing president, his chosen successor Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, and leading opposition candidate Martin Fayulu all cast their ballots in the same polling station in Kinshasa.
Shadary said he was “confident of a victory in this election”.
“As of tonight, I am certain that I will be the president of the republic,” he said.
Fayulu, meanwhile, said yesterday’s vote marked the end of Kabila’s rule.
“By this vote, we sign not only the end of the misery of the Congolese people, but also the insecurity of our people. We aspire to change and it is that change we must bring through this election,” he added.
The electoral commission said official results of the presidential poll will be announced on January 15.
In Kinshasa, home to four million voters, 20 percent of the polling stations did not open due to a lack of electronic voting machines.
Earlier this month, one of the electoral commission’s main warehouses in the city was burned down, destroying more than two-thirds of the voting machines allocated for the city.
Yesterday’s vote marks the first time electronic voting systems are being used, and some opposition figures and international observers have expressed concern, saying the machines are more vulnerable to vote-rigging than traditional ballots.
Micheline Kabund, a 47-year-old teacher, said she found the machines easy to use.
“But I don’t know what is inside the machine. If the result comes out like we voted then change will come. I hope the machines are not manipulated,” she said at a voting centre in Kinshasa’s Bumbu district.
Meanwhile, Blandine Kiemba, also a teacher, said electronic voting would be “complicated and difficult” for those who do not know how to read or use a computer.
“The machine is quick and easy to use if you know how to read,” she said.
In Bumbu, only 10 out 12 polling stations had opened, and more than a dozen voters said they were unable to vote because they could not find their names on the register.
Aristote Zenga, a 25-year-old driver, said he had registered to vote but could not find his name on the voters’ lists.
“I’m feeling very bad about this,” he said. “It is my first time trying to vote.”
Voting is not taking place in at least three cities, where more than one million registered voters live.
Last Wednesday, the electoral commission (CENI) said it postponed the presidential and parliamentary polls in the three cities because of concerns over Ebola outbreak and ethnic violence.
Voting in Beni and Betumbo in the eastern North Kivu province has been delayed until March next year, due to the ongoing Ebola outbreak which has killed more than 330 people.
Voting in the western city of Yumbi in Bandundu province will also take place in March next year owing to ethnic violence that claimed the lives of at least 100 people this month.
The DRC, a country of more than 80 million people, has not seen a peaceful transition of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.
– Scores of polling centres had not yet opened in the capital, hours after DRC elections began, the electoral commission chief confirmed yesterday, as he faced shouts of “We wanted to vote!” and frustrated people walked away.
The chief of the DRC’s electoral commission said that 49 voting centres in Kinshasa were still waiting for voters’ lists.
“We have printed lists for 29 of them and the rest are being printed right now,” Corneille Nangaa said while hurrying from centre to centre, at times handing out the lists himself.
Hundreds of people waited at the Saint Raphael center in Kinshasa’s Limete neighborhood.
“We are waiting to know who is supposed to vote where,” polling official Christian Mwangalay said. At least 6 000 people were expected to vote there. Dozens of young men decided to practice voting, piling ballots in a basket.
In Beni, where voting was postponed until March, long after Congo’s new leader will be inaugurated in January, a few hundred protesters staged mock elections.
People cast paper ballots and many sang in Swahili, “Voting is our right and nobody can stop us.”
Meanwhile, Pope Francis has prayed for those suffering from violence and Ebola in DRC, and is urging peaceful elections.
Pope Francis asked faithful in St Peter’s Square yesterday to join him in prayers and expressed hope that “all work to maintain a peaceful climate that permits peaceful and regular conducting of the elections.”
— Al Jazeera
derick.khumalo