![]() Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila(C) waves as his wife Marie Olive Lembe di Sita(L) and Parliament candidate Marie-Ange Lukiana(R) look on during a campaign rally in Kinshasa. Election campaigning in the DR Congo was ending on a bloody note as six people died in violence ahead of the country's first multi-party vote in 46 years this weekend.
(AFP) |
Election campaigning in the Democratic Republic of Congo was ending on a bloody note as six people died in violence ahead of the country's first multi-party vote in 46 years this weekend.
Two people were shot dead in the troubled eastern region of North-Kivu late Thursday in an ambush on a convoy of cars belonging to the minister of land, Venant Tshipasa, who was not in the vehicles at the time.
The attack came after three policemen and a civilian were killed at an election rally in Kinshasa where 40,000 people had gathered to welcome rebel leader-turned-presidential-candidate, Jean-Pierre Bemba, to the capital.
Witnesses said one of the policemen was shot dead and another stoned to death when Bemba supporters clashed with police outside the Tata Raphael stadium.
About 20 other people, mostly police, were injured and a church and other buildings set alight in the worst violence yet during a ruthless election campaign, which has seen old wartime foes vie for the presidency.
Bemba later condemned the rioting, saying: "These excesses are not in the interest of our party. The elections are a chance we cannot miss."
The United Nations predicted more trouble as the country heads to the polls Sunday in the first multiparty presidential and legislative elections since declaring independence from Belgium in 1960.
"The capacity for things to go wrong is fairly well developed here. We believe these will be good elections, but not perfect ones, there will be problems," UN envoy Ross Mountain said on Friday.
He praised the police and political leaders for preventing the rioting from escalating, saying calm had returned to Kinshasa.
"There were casualties, there were deaths that are absolutely tragic and obvisously cause for concern," he told reporters.
But he added: "This did not become a major confrontation. We were tested I think yesterday (Thursday), and I believe the Congolese authorities and the Congolese leaders came through that test."
The UN warned that the international community still needed to raise about 40 million dollars for the expected second round of the vote.
Foreign funding, election observers and peacekeepers have poured into the vast central African nation for Sunday's first round vote.
Germany is spearheading a 2,000-strong military EU mission to secure the elections, in addition to an existing 17,000 UN peacekeeping force in the country.
The EU deployment includes a rapid reaction force based in Gabon which will evacuate foreigners if the vote turns violent.
In an early mishap for the EU troops, a Belgian observation drone crashed Friday into a neighbourhood of Kinshasa, without causing casualties, according to a European military spokesman.
The DRC, formerly known as Zaire, is the size of western Europe and has immense mineral wealth but almost no infrastructure. The economy was ruined by 37 years of dictatorial rule by Mobutu Seso Seko, followed by a five-year regional war.
Dubbed "Africa's World War," it claimed up to four million lives and officially ended in 2003.
Since then the DRC has been run by a power-sharing government headed by President Joseph Kabila with Bemba and fellow ex-rebel leader Azarias Ruberwa as his deputies.
The 35-year-old Kabila is widely tipped to win the presidential vote.
He has impressed the West by clamping down on rampant corruption, but ethnic fighting, clashes between rebels and the army, and looting of natural resources persist.
Peace received a boost this week when rebels in the eastern Ituri province agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire.
But campaign observers are concerned as to how effective the elections will be in ending decades of corrupt rule and conflict.
Church leaders on Friday warned that the vote will prove pointless unless the DRC received more foreign aid, the security forces were beefed up and political leaders put the good of the people ahead of their personal ambitions.
"Millions of people will have died in vain and millions more will face the same fate," they said in a statement.
The head of the electoral commission, Apollinaire Malu Malu, said campaigning will end at midnight on Friday and appealed for calm.
Some 25.7 million people are registered to vote in the polls, which will see them elect a president and 500 lawmakers from a list of more than 9,000 candidates.
The European Union has said the elections need to bring lasting peace to the DRC to help stabilise the Great Lakes region.
The country's eastern border runs along a faultline of ethnic rivalries that gave rise to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the protracted civil war in Burundi.