DRC hit by post election riots
2006-10-30 22:06
Kinshasa - Rioting mobs rampaged through a northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo town on Monday, destroying 43 polling stations after a soldier killed two electoral workers in violence that came a day after the volatile country's run-off presidential vote.
United Nations spokesperson Leocadio Salmeron said an army sergeant shot the two election workers in the eastern town Fataki, a town on DRC's border with Uganda.
It was not immediately clear what prompted the shooting, but Salmeron said the soldier appeared to be drunk. Police arrested the soldier, he said.
The killings sparked rioting, and villagers in Fataki burned down 43 polling stations and the ballots stored within them, Salmeron said from the eastern town of Bunia.
The violence came as tallies were posted at polling stations across vast DRC and hundreds of UN trucks and minibuses swept around the capital collecting ballots from the run-off, which pits President Joseph Kabila against his vice-president and former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba.
Personal security forces of the two candidates fought for three days in August over results after the first round of voting in July.
Money-extorting soldiers
On Sunday, at least one person died as protesters who suspected ballot tampering ransacked a dozen polling stations and clashed with security forces elsewhere in northern DRC. A rights group said blockades set up by money-extorting soldiers prevented thousands from voting in the east.
A dozen polling centres had been scheduled to reopen on Monday to give voters another chance in the northern town of Bumba after Sunday's violence.
But electoral commission head Apollinaire Malu-Malu said that vote had been delayed until Tuesday to give time for electoral materials and officials to arrive.
The country's four-year post-war transition climaxed with the run-off between a president and a rebel warlord - a contest many hope will bring stability to a region that has been raven by years of dictatorship and wars that pulled in more than half a dozen African nations.
Both candidates have pledged to accept the results and international observers said Sunday's polls closed with relatively few incidents.
Voters kept away by rainstorms
Vote counting began late on Sunday, with electoral workers tallying ballots by battery-powered lanterns and candlelight.
Some stations posted their local results as early as 23:00, but overall results are not expected for several days.
The electoral commission has said it will issue provisional results by November 19.
"The country has been destroyed by the dictatorship and war," said Xavier Kekeli, a 44-year-old French teacher working an electoral station in Kinshasa that stayed open late into the evening to accommodate those kept away by morning rainstorms.
"Everything now comes from the foreigners - even the candles... now it's time for the Congolese to take on our own destiny."
In Kinshasa, where problems collecting and counting millions of ballots in the first round left the final tally open to criticism, the UN has commandeered trucks and cars from its various agencies to pick up votes and bring them to one of 14 collection centres.
The post-war transition has been secured by the largest UN mission in the world, a 17 600-strong force backed up for the vote by 2 500 European Union troops in Congo and Gabon.
- SAPA