800 contest DRC elections
2006-07-17 15:17
Kinshasa - Voters in the Democratic Republic of Congo's first free parliamentary elections in decades will have to grapple with a monster ballot - six pages, each as big as a man's chest, featuring the names, photographs and party symbols of more than 800 parliamentary candidates.
According to Carmina Sanchis-Ruescas, head of the DRC operation of IFES, United States-based non-profit organisation helped design the ballot, which was the largest made so far.
IFES had helped in elections in more than 130 countries, among them Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia.
Sanchis-Ruescas, who was Spanish, said in most countries making the transition to democracy, ballots list only parties, not candidates.
But, members of the DRC's interim parliament were so thrilled to be participating in their first elections, they decided that each candidate deserved to have his or her name and photograph on the ballot.
Ballot lists 800 candidates
Sanchis-Ruescas said: "They all want to be on the ballot, leaving us with the difficult task of designing the biggest ballot."
Kinshasa's big ballot listed more than 800 parliamentary candidates who were contesting 17 seats in one of the capital's four electoral districts.
Ballots for the capital's other three districts had only five of the 86-by-86-centimetre ballots.
Only one man had contested in most elections in DRC's history. Dictator for 32 years, Mobutu Sese Seko, organised a series of sham votes in which every citizen was a member of his party and required by law to vote for him.
Nationwide, more than 9 000 candidates had signed up this year to vie for 500 seats in parliament. The presidency would be contested by 33 hopefuls.
Flavien Misoni, the electoral commission officer responsible for deploying the ballots and organising logistics for the vote, said the big ballot only complicated his already knotty election operations.
Misoni said: "We will have to use thousands of extra ballot boxes just to fit in all the sheets, that's just one of the difficulties the ballot has introduced. This big ballot was certainly not a gift."
- AP