DRC approves electoral law
2006-03-10 21:59
Kinshasa - DRC President Joseph Kabila rubber stamped a long-awaited electoral law on Thursday, setting the stage for elections in June meant to draw a line under years of war and chaos, said officials.
Within hours, electoral commission chief Apollinaire Malu Malu said presidential and parliamentary polls would go ahead on June 18, a date already mooted, across the vast Democratic Republic of Congo. He said nominations would open on Friday.
Under a peace deal that officially ended a five-year regional war in 2003, Congo's first democratic polls in four decades were due to be completed by June 30, although many analysts had expected slippage amid political disputes and militia violence.
Irreversible reality
Malu Malu said: "The electoral commission has decided to organise the first round of elections before June 30 2006 to give the Congolese people hope and make elections in the Congo an irreversible reality."
He said Kabila had approved the electoral law.
The electoral commission had been waiting for Kabila to approve the law before it could fix the poll date, register candidates or print ballot papers for 25 million voters spread across a chaotic country the size of Western Europe.
Power-sharing govt
Congo's polls were originally meant to be held in 2005. But, fighting had continued across much of the east and wrangling between the former warring factions, now in a power-sharing government, had repeatedly stalled the transition.
The logistical nightmare of organising polls in Congo - where roads were non-existent and election material had to be shipped by air, down rivers and on people's heads through the jungle - had also delayed the process.
The leading UDPS opposition party of Etienne Tshisekedi, had boycotted the process and was due to hold a demonstration in
Kinshasa on Friday. Previous UDPS protests had sparked clashes with police.
Electoral preparations
The party said in January that it would take part in elections if certain conditions were met, such as re-opening voter registration and allowing UDPS participation in electoral preparations. But, the conditions had not yet been met.
The former Belgian colony's 1998-2003 war sucked in six African countries and sparked the world's worst humanitarian crisis in 60 years. Since it began, some 4 million people had been killed, mostly from hunger and disease.
The world's biggest peacekeeping force, with some 17 000 troops and police, was trying to restore order and controlled lawless militia fighters in the east, but had to contend with ill-discipline and dissent in a national army forged from various rival armed factions.