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Congo (Kinshasa): Election Background Analysis
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Nov 29, 2011 (111129)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Widespread discontent with the current regime and the
longing for radical change do explain the great popularity
of Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the Union for Democracy and
Social Progress (UDPS), DRC's oldest opposition party,
established in 1982. ... [His] message has been warmly
received because it reflects the deepest aspirations of the
majority of Congolese. Faced with this formidable
challenge, the Kabila regime is doing its best to win the
election through violence and intimidation." - Georges
Nzongola-Ntalaja
This AfricaFocus Bulletin has background analyses by
Congolese scholars Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and Mvemba
Dizolele, as well as a press release and excerpts from a
pre-election UN report on campaign violence, predominantly by
officials and supporters of the existing government.
For another longer commentary by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja,
see http://www.aljazeera.com / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/cy46x8h
For an additional commentary by Mvemba Dizolele, see
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/d4h6o2e, as well as his blog
http://dizolele.com
Jason Stearns, on his blog Congo Siasa (http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/), has a very detailed
province-by-province analysis, which he admits is "very
rough," of the prospects for the presidential vote, which he
says will be very close. (direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/d2xnnul) Stearns also has an extensive
set of links to other election sources (http://tinyurl.com/crhkb4l)
Additional links to other local sources are in this posting
by Tom Devriendt
http://africasacountry.com/2011/11/28/congo-votes/
Other sites for updated news and analysis include
AllAfrica
http://allafrica.com/congo-kinshasa
Radio Okapi
http://radiookapi.net/
Le Carnet de Colette Braeckmann
http://blog.lesoir.be/colette-braeckman/
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on the Democratic
Repuglic of the Congo, see http://www.africafocus.org/country/congokin.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Congo's violent election countdown reflects rejection of
regime
Attacks on opponents of President Joseph Kabila have not
dented support for his main rival, Etienne Tshisekedi
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
November 22, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk /
direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/cp5to98
[Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is professor of African Studies at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author,
among other works, of The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A
People's History (http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1842770535).]
In less than a week, on 28 November, millions of Congolese
are set to go to the polls to elect the country's president
for the next five years. Of the dozen candidates in the
running, only two have the ability to wage a credible
campaign all over the country: Joseph Kabila, for the
obvious reason that he is the incumbent with all the
resources of the state at his disposal, and Etienne
Tshisekedi, because of his standing as the foremost leader
of the Congolese democracy movement since 1980.
Were the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a land
accustomed to free and fair elections, media pundits would
have already designated the probable winner. But given the
burden of history, in which a succession of self-proclaimed
leaders have run the country for more than 100 years, there
is no assurance the electoral results will necessarily
reflect the will of the people. From King Leopold's Congo
Free State, through Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire to the DRC of
Laurent and Joseph Kabila, this land has often been called a
"geological scandal" because of its extraordinary natural
wealth. However, the real scandal of Congo is that the
wealth of its natural resources has never been used to
benefit the mass of the people. Instead, it has gone to
enrich the country's rulers and their business and political
partners at home and abroad. In the 2011 Human Development
Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
the DRC is ranked bottom of 187 nations surveyed in terms of
the Human Development Index, a measure of wellbeing on the
basis of life expectancy, personal income, health and
education.
In addition to this disastrous record on economic and social
development, the DRC is a "failed state" with respect to
safety and security, particularly in eastern areas, where a
succession of armies and militia groups, both foreign and
national, have plundered the country, subjected women and
girls to horrific sexual violence, and used forced and child
labour to amass wealth through the illegal exploitation of
mineral and other resources. Joseph Kabila, who was elected
in 2006, but has been in power since January 2001, faces a
Herculean task in both explaining his inability to govern
effectively and convincing the electorate to give him
another five-year term.
Widespread discontent with the current regime and the
longing for radical change do explain the great popularity
of Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the Union for Democracy and
Social Progress (UDPS), DRC's oldest opposition party,
established in 1982. At 79, Tshisekedi is displaying unusual
physical endurance as he travels around the country to
campaign for economic reconstruction, the establishment of
the rule of law and the moralisation of politics through
responsible leadership and the fight against corruption.
This message has been warmly received because it reflects
the deepest aspirations of the majority of Congolese.
Faced with this formidable challenge, the Kabila regime is
doing its best to win the election through violence and
intimidation. Opposition candidates have been harassed to
reduce their freedom of movement and their ability to
campaign freely. Their posters have been destroyed and
removed from public places, not only by the youth wing of
Kabila's party, the People's Party for Reconstruction and
Development (PPRD), but by the national police. Even
Tshisekedi himself was grounded for more than two weeks in
South Africa, after the planes he had chartered for his
campaign were denied permission to land in DRC by the civil
aviation authority.
Unfortunately, confrontations between PPRD and UDPS
supporters have led to deaths and serious injuries, as the
UDPS has resolved to resist officially sanctioned violence
and illegal acts, rather than turning the other cheek in the
tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It
should be pointed out that since the sovereign national
conference in 1992, Congolese citizens have had a right -
and an obligation - to resist unconstitutional rule and
illegal acts by state authorities.
Criticism of UDPS policy in foreign media is widely
perceived in Congo as another instance of double standards
by the international community, which has remained largely
silent in the face of gross human rights violations by the
Kabila regime, including the assassination of human rights
activist Floribert Chebeya in 2010, and of journalists such
as Bapuwa Muamba in 2006. Jean-Bosco Ntanganda, for whom an
arrest warrant has been issued by the International Criminal
Court (ICC), is a senior officer in Kabila's army, while
Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, architect of the ethnic
cleansing against Kasaians in Katanga in 1992-94 and current
master of hate speech, is a Kabila ally who serves as
president of the Katanga provincial assembly. The
international community seems more concerned with statements
by Tshisekedi affirming the constitutional right of
Congolese citizens to self-defence than with going after
real criminals.
Whatever the results that are eventually announced by the
electoral commission following the elections, the current
campaign is already a victory for the forces of change. It
has demonstrated the overwhelming rejection of the current
regime, which is a continuation of what Laurent Kabila
himself once described as "a conglomerate of opportunists
and adventurers". The president, his entourage, the cabinet
and other senior state officials have done nothing but
enrich themselves to the detriment of ordinary Congolese
men, women and children. Their defeat, if it takes place,
will open a new and glorious chapter for a democratic and
prosperous Congo for which Patrice Lumumba died 50 years
ago.
DRC: Etienne Tshisekedi Decoded
"There is a Congolese logic that is not Cartesian." Mobutu
Sese Seko
Mvemba Dizolele
http://dizolele.com/?p=808
November 12, 2011
[Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a writer, foreign policy analyst
and independent journalist. Dizolele is the Peter J. Duignan
Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University Hoover
Institution. He is the author of a forthcoming biography:
Mobutu: the Rise and Fall of the Leopard King (Random House
UK).]
Beside Patrice Lumumba, no Congolese leader has been as
vilified by the international community as UDPS' Etienne
Tshisekedi. Western policymakers and reporters often deem
him irrational, intransigent, moody and uncooperative. Like
Lumumba before him, Tshisekedi is also Congo's most
misunderstood politician.
This became clear last week when, speaking from South Africa
via teleconference to a group of women members of his party
in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi derided President Joseph Kabila and
declared himself head of state. He also called on his
partisans to break jails and free his followers who had been
arrested over the past several weeks, if the government did
not release them within 48 hours. The talk, which was
originally intended for his supporters only, was later
broadcast by Radio Lisanga TV, a station sympathetic to
UDPS.
The comments set off a chain reaction. The government
immediately cut off Lisanga's signal. The minister of
information took to the airwaves, called Tshisekedi
irresponsible and compared his statements to high treason.
Most importantly, the international community strongly
condemned the declarations, with the European Union, France,
Belgium, the United States and the United Nations issuing
strong statements against election-related violence, and
urged all parties to behave appropriately.
But what does it mean to behave appropriately in this case?
Viewed from a western perspective, Tshisekedi's comments
seem indeed irresponsible. But the man and his behavior must
be analyzed within DRC's electoral context for their real
value.
For the past several weeks, opposition parties, with UDPS in
the lead, have complained about massive frauds and lack of
transparency in the electoral process. They allege that the
CENI (Electoral Commission) enrolled minors, police officers
and servicemen, all of whom are not allowed to vote. In
total, they allege that nearly 2 million people were
enrolled illegally in areas favorable to President Kabila.
Only an independent audit of the registry could determine
whether or not these allegations are founded. But the CENI
has continuously rejected UDPS' call for a transparent,
independent audit of voter lists. The opposition further
challenges the gerrymandering of districts based on the
current enrollment of 32 million voters as Kinshasa, a city
of nearly 10 million people, lost 7 parliamentary seats
while Katanga and Equateur provinces have increased their
representations. The explanations provided by the CENI,
while possible, have not been convincing, since the registry
remains off limit to opposition parties.
Further poisoning the climate, there is no adequate forum
for a dialogue between the CENI and the opposition,
effectively denying the two sides a constructive platform to
communicate. As a result, UDPS partisans have staged weekly
street protests in Kinshasa to demand that the integrity of
the electoral process be re-instated. These protests have
invariably been repressed by the police and members of the
opposition are regularly intimidated by security services. A
few UDPS partisans have been killed and 35 of them have been
arrested.
The diplomatic corps in Kinshasa, and the international
community at-large, has been quick to praise the CENI for
enrolling 32 million voters, a feat worth noting in light of
enormous logistical challenges, as well as financial and
time constraints. But voter enrollment is only the first
step of an electoral process, not the end. These same
international actors, however, have remained silent over
allegations of massive fraud and irregularities in the
electoral process. They have all but ignored the violence
and abuses that have been inflicted on opposition supporters
by state agents.
Since the campaign started on October 28, the RTNC (state
radio and television network) has yet to grant the
opposition equal access to its programs. Violent clashes
between partisans of the presidential majority and
opposition supporters have become too common. In Kinshasa,
for instance, the presidential majority has freely mounted
billboards and posters of President Kabila. The opposition,
however, has not been afforded the same right. Recently,
UDPS partisans were beaten when they placed Tshisekedi's
posters at Rond-Pont Victoire, a prominent and popular city
square. The posters were reportedly destroyed by plainclothed
police officers.
Apparently, these and other similar incidents of violence
perpetrated by security forces and groups affiliated with
the presidential majority did not warrant a strong
condemnation by the international community. This silence
seems to have emboldened the security services to carry out
this intimidation campaign.
Incidentally, the United Nations in Congo refused to release
its report on election-related violence, which came out this
week, until matters got out of control and its own staffers
threatened to leak the report to the media.
It took Tshisekedi's bold statements made in a foreign
country for the international community to react so strongly
against election-related violence. Western diplomats have
ignored the opposition grievances, insisting that the
electoral process was going well, even as Congolese and
foreign analysts said otherwise.
If the process were good and transparent as these diplomats
have argued, why would Tshisekedi's declaring himself head
of state in a foreign country matter? It should be
laughable, since DRC president would be chosen through
transparent and credible polls, not via video conference.
If justice were served in the case of jailed UDPS partisans,
why would Tshisekedi's ultimatum to the Congolese police to
release them within 48 hours upset the government and the
international community?
To-date, the African Union has expressed little interest in
DRC's problems. But as soon as Tshisekedi made his comments,
AU chairman Jean Ping rushed to Kinshasa to try and appease
the different parties in what appears to be an escalation in
electoral psychological warfare.
The international media has all but ignored Tshisekedi
throughout this process, until he issued this ultimatum.
Even Yahoo News now has an article on Tshisekedi.
This is not the international community's finest hour in
Congo. Whether or not diplomats like Tshisekedi, he is an
icon to the Congolese. No Congolese leader has done and
sacrificed more for the emergence of democracy in DRC than
this man, whom they affectionately call Ya Tshitshi. His bad
relationship with the international community over the last
decade has further radicalized him. But for a segment of the
population, he is the man who best articulates their
aspirations and dreams.
Tshisekedi has built a loyal and committed base over 30
years. His followers revere him and see him as a messiah,
and would not hesitate to do as he says. As such, he may
just be the most powerful man in this race. He has no money,
no state machinery, no militia, and few friends in the
diplomatic community. But he has nothing to lose, but the
Congolese people and a legacy to protect.
Congo will not have peaceful elections if the international
community continues to act irresponsibly and ignore the
grievances of the opposition. Tshisekedi may not be DRC's
most charming politician, but he is one of the few who speak
to the people's frustrations. As hard and uncomfortable as
it may be for Western diplomats and the Congolese
government, now is the time to constructively engage
Tshisekedi and the other opposition parties.
UN report sounds alarm over pre-election rights abuses in DR
Congo
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40341
Full report available at:
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/ZR/UNJHRO_HRElectionsReport_en.pdf
9 November 2011 - A new United Nations report details
numerous human rights violations during the pre-electoral
period in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and
warns that such incidents could threaten the democratic
process and result in post-electoral violence.
The presidential and parliamentary polls are slated for 28
November - only the second time since its independence in
1960 that DRC will be holding democratic elections.
The joint report issued today by the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN
peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUSCO), documents 188
violations apparently linked to the electoral process that
occurred between 1 November 2010 and 30 September this year.
"I am sure the Congolese people share my hope for peaceful,
free and fair elections and a smooth exercise of their
fundamental right to vote," said High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay.
"The kind of intimidation, threats, incitement, arbitrary
arrests and violence that we have documented is unacceptable
and has a chilling effect on voters," she said.
"The Government and leaders of political parties must make
it clear that there is to be zero tolerance against any such
actions which seriously limit the exercise of the right to
vote."
The violations most frequently infringed individuals'
freedom of expression, the right to physical integrity and
the right to liberty and security of the person, as well as
the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, according to a
news release on the report. There have also been instances
of violence and disturbance of public order committed by
supporters of political parties.
While the report is not an exhaustive account of human
rights violations and acts of violence perpetrated,
violations documented include incidents such as death
threats against human rights defenders for holding a press
conference in which they denounced reforms, and the beating
or arrests of civilians for merely wearing the T-shirts of
opposition parties.
Among other violations were repeated summons to the National
Intelligence Agency, the reported beating of a civilian for
asking an "unpatriotic" question and the arrest and illtreatment
of four individuals for discussing politics in a
barbershop.
Most of the violations committed directly involved elements
of the Congolese National Police, or of the National
Intelligence Services.
The situation in the country's east is of particular
concern, the report notes, adding that political parties
have reportedly been targeted and their members detained,
ill-treated and threatened.
The report stresses that freedom of expression is essential
during an electoral period, as people can only effectively
exercise their right to vote if they can make informed
decisions.
"Taking into account the violent events following the 2006
poll, the 2011 elections will constitute an important
challenge for human rights, security and the consolidation
of democracy in the country," it adds.
The report urges the Congolese Government to intensify
cooperation with civil society, to issue public messages
calling for state agents - particularly members of the
security forces - to promote and respect human rights, and
to fight impunity of state agents who are perpetrators of
human rights violations.
It also urges political parties to issue public statements
promoting peaceful participation in the electoral process
and calling on supporters, particularly the youth, to
refrain from violence and to respect national laws and the
public order.
The international community is called on to step up its
support to the Government, civil society and other
stakeholders in their efforts to train security forces and
judicial officers, and to promote free and fair elections
and monitoring of such elections.
Yesterday the Security Council reiterated its call for
credible and peaceful elections in DRC, stressing that the
Government bore the primary responsibility for ensuring free
and fair polls.
It also reiterated its concern over reports of electionrelated
violence and urged all parties to campaign
peacefully, in a press statement following a briefing from
the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for DRC
and head of MONUSCO, Roger Meece.
Excerpts from Report: Summary
Elections for the Presidency and the National Assembly in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo are due to take place
on 28 November 2011and those for the Provincial Assemblies
in 2012. This report documents violations of human rights
and fundamental freedoms as well as acts of violence
perpetrated between November 2010 and September 2011 in the
context of the electoral process.
The United Nations Security Council, in its Resolution 1991
of 28 June 2011, urges the Government of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo as well as all relevant parties to
"ensure an environment conducive to a free, fair, credible,
inclusive, transparent, peaceful, and timely electoral
process, which includes freedom of expression, freedom
of assembly, equitable access to media including State
media, safety for all candidates journalists, human
rights defenders and actors from the civil society including
women". In the same resolution, the Security Council further
"decides that MONUSCO shall support the organization and
conduct of elections [inter alia] by monitoring,
reporting, and following-up on human rights violations in
the context of the elections."
During the period under review, the United Nations Joint
Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) noted an increase in political
activities as well as a concerning number of human rights
violations and acts of violence targeting political party
members, journalists and human rights defenders. In spite of
constitutional guarantees, those seeking to express their
opinions and their fundamental freedoms of assembly and
association were often subjected to abuse by State agents
and saw their right to physical integrity violated. Between
1 November 2010 and 30 September 2011, the UNJHRO documented
188 cases of human rights violations, varying in severity,
apparently linked with the electoral process. The situation
in the East of the country is of particular concern, as
political parties have reportedly been targeted and many of
their members have been deprived of their liberty or
subjected to ill-treatment and threats. At the same time,
some political parties have not imposed sufficient restraint
upon their followers, which has contributed to violent acts
and the disturbance of public order during political
demonstrations.
This report acknowledges progress made in some areas of
consolidation of democracy in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo and improvement, especially in recent months, in the
behavior of some police units tasked with maintaining order
during political demonstrations. Nevertheless, most of the
violations noted in the report targeted members or
supporters of opposition parties, in particular the Union
pour la démocratie et le progrès social (UDPS) and the Union
pour la nation congolaise (UNC). Journalists were also
harassed or arrested on numerous occasions, most frequently
by State intelligence and security actors, apparently for
carrying out their functions.
The report also notes worrying trends of manipulation of the
State's police, intelligence and justice sectors by
political actors. The report expresses serious concern
regarding the current situation and concludes that the
continued repression of human rights and fundamental
freedoms in the pre-electoral period may increase the
likelihood of individuals and political parties resorting to
violent means, endanger the democratic process and lead to
post-electoral violence.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic
publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on
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international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by
William Minter.
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