Background Briefing

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The Challenge of Elections

 

Voter registration began on June 20, 2005, was to last three weeks in each province, and was due to end in October. But, in many provinces authorities extended registration to four weeks or more because of logistical and security problems. Though twenty-four million persons had already registered elsewhere in the nation by early December, the process was not yet finished in Equateur and Bandundu provinces. Persons who registered also received national identity cards, an important measure in a country where identity documents had not been issued for many years.

 

Given the lack of state infrastructure in such a large country, significant problems had been foreseen in registering citizens. But the difficulties and irregularities noted by the end of November were less than had been predicted. On November 15 the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), responsible for managing the election process, announced that in the Kinshasa area there had been 150,199 cases of attempted fraud, most involving persons who had tried to register twice.3 As of this writing, data were not yet available from other areas.

 

In several cases combatants opposed to the national government turned to violence to try to halt the registration. In October 2005, a group of Mai Mai, fighters defending local interests, took six election workers hostage in North Kivu, holding some for over a week. In Ituri, militia attacked registration centers or official vehicles on three occasions, once holding three officials hostage for ten days.4 In some parts of eastern Congo authorities decided not to open registration centers because of insecurity in the area. Voters were unable to register in such places or were obliged to travel long distances to register elsewhere.5

 

In North Kivu, tensions between Tutsi and other ethnic communities increased as more than a thousand Congolese Tutsi who had been refugees in Rwanda came home, presumably because they wanted to participate in the elections. Congolese of other groups alleged that Rwandan citizens were registering in order to be able to pass themselves off as Congolese citizens, an allegation that appears to have been true in only a small number of cases.6

 

In some places, authorities failed to pay the salaries of election workers and some of them threatened to disrupt the referendum to call attention to their grievances. Election officials at several eastern Congo centers visited by a Human Rights Watch researcher had been working for weeks without payment. When the president of the electoral commission visited Bunia in October, five election workers were arrested and some were injured when protesting the failure to pay their salaries.7 In a similar incident in December, eight workers were arrested and several of them beaten in Kinshasa when attempting to claim the pay due them.8 According to one election coordinator in North Kivu, officials at the election center in Sake refused to hand in their voter registration materials until they received their salaries.9 A South Kivu election coordinator said that only workers in the provincial capital and on the island of Idjwi had been paid and another electoral official said that unpaid workers threatened protests unless they were paid.10 Whether to compensate for unpaid salaries or simply to profit from the new opportunity, election officials and some police officers used the registration process to engage in petty corruption, including by taking money from persons who wanted to move ahead in registration lines.11 Police officers in Goma fought over profits from this corruption on September 9; in the dispute three people were killed, including two police officers and one bystander.12

 

Delays in disbursing funds also hindered electoral workers in carrying out their duties. According to an electoral officer in southern Ituri, he was unable to send staff to some areas because of threats of violence from unpaid creditors awaiting reimbursements for gasoline and other supplies provided to electoral workers.13

 

Insufficient registration materials were received in Kasai province, an area that strongly supports the main opposition party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (Union Pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social, UDPS). UDPS President Etienne Tshisekedi has opposed the election process, which he sees as flawed; he has urged supporters to boycott registration and the polls, but with only limited success. Some people of Kasai saw the shortage of materials as a deliberate effort to limit the number of voters in the area, but once MONUC officials signaled the shortage, more materials were sent and voters in numbers proportional to those registering in other areas were eventually registered.14

 



[3] Presentation, Abée Malu-Malu, President of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), Brussels, November 28, 2005.

[4] Human Rights Watch interview, John Ukunya, IEC, Head of Liaison Office, Bunia, October 27, 2005.

[5] Ibid., presentation by Abée Malu-Malu, Brussels.

[6] Human Rights Watch interviews, Marie Shematsi, Co-ordinator, IEC, North Kivu, October 6, 2005; Maitre Kambale Ngayiremawa, Legal Advisor, IEC, Goma, October 6, 2005; Head of Office, North Kivu, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), October 5, 2005.

[7] Human Rights Watch interview, head of Liaison Office, IEC, Bunia and MONUC officer, Bunia, October 27, 2005.

[8] Observatoire Congolais des droits humains, Communiqué de Presse N OCDH/008/005.

[9] Human Rights Watch interview, Co-ordinator IEC, North Kivu, October 6, 2005.

[10] Human Rights Watch interviews, Gaudens Maheshe, Coordinator, IEC, South Kivu, Bukavu, November 29, 2005 and Head of Liaison Office, IEC, Uvira, November 24, 2005.

[11] Human Rights Watch interview, Election Centre, Masisi territory, October 9, 2005.

[12] Human Rights Watch interview, Co-ordinator, IEC, North Kivu, October 5, 2005.

[13] Human Rights Watch interview, Head of Liaison Office, IEC, Bunia, October 27, 2005.

[14] Human Rights Watch interview, MONUC official, Kinshasa, October 3, 2005.


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