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Congo elections questioned

 

AP

Tuesday 1st August, 2006   Posted: 16:00 CIT   (21:00 GMT)

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) – A former rebel leader–turned presidential candidate alleged massive fraud in Congo’s historic elections, but pledged Tuesday that his protest would remain peaceful.

Electoral commission officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Official, final results from Sunday’s vote were not expected for weeks.

The Atlanta, Georgia–based Carter Center, meanwhile, hailed the country’s first multiparty vote in more than 40 years, saying that although there were procedural problems, "on the whole, these appear at this point to be minor."

However, the Carter Center said it couldn’t make a ruling yet on the overall fairness of the vote, since vote counting continues and a second–round run–off between the two top vote–getters in a field of 33 is possible.

Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel leader who became vice president in Congo’s transitional administration, denounced the poll and alleged "massive fraud."

"This is not democracy," Ruberwa told reporters in the capital, Kinshasa.

Ruberwa said Rwandan Hutu militias in the lawless east threatened to cut off some voters’ ears if they didn’t vote for President Joseph Kabila, who negotiated the end to war in 2002 and leads the national–unity government. Kabila is also considered a top candidate.

The Rwandan militias, who helped orchestrate Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, fled to Congo after the killings ended.

Ruberwa also cited other problems with voter registration and said his party supporters reported one incident in which electoral officials allegedly emptied a ballot box and replaced the sheets within.

Ruberwa said the problems must be addressed before final results are announced and said he’d pursue any claims to Congo’s Supreme Court. He said the balloting might have to be rerun.

But he ruled out returning to arms. "That’s excluded," he said. "We’re in the process in good faith. We took up arms for democracy," he said.

Ruberwa’s party has strong support from a minority Tutsi community in Congo’s east, but is otherwise unpopular and his fighters were accused of atrocities during the war. The party is considered a likely spoiler if it loses ground at the polls.

The Carter Center, which deployed 58 international observers in Congo, said in a statement that security forces had "obstructed legitimate democratic activity" during the campaign and had restricted some candidates’ movements.

But it said in preliminary findings that "any first elections such as these, we are well aware that the most demanding aspects of international elections standards cannot be entirely met."

Electoral officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

On Monday, Congolese electoral officials backed by riot police faced down stone–throwing boycotters to allow voters a second chance in central Congo as the party of another candidate, another former rebel leader–turned vice president, Jean–Pierre Bemba, claimed a lead in over 50 percent of the nation’s provinces.

Bemba’s Congolese Liberation Movement said the one–time warlord was confident of victory.

None of the 33 presidential candidates was expected to win the outright majority needed to avoid a run–off, which would likely be held in October. No partial results were being announced, but local results were being posted in 60 districts, and various groups were doing their own tallies.

Electoral commission Chairman Appolinaire Malu–Malu called for restraint in the private compilation of results in the restive country.

Several leading election candidates are former rebels who still command private armed militias, and could pose a real threat to peace after the elections.

Bemba become a front–runner while campaigning on a message that he is a true son of Congo, while his main competition and current president, Kabila, grew up in neighboring Tanzania. The message touches on a sore point of ethnicity in a country that has nine neighbors carved out by colonial leaders who took no account of ethnic divisions in drawing borders.

Voting was largely peaceful Sunday and the European Union and Congo’s former colonial ruler, Belgium, said isolated violence had not kept the elections from being free and democratic.

Some 17,600 U.N. peacekeepers and 2,000 EU troops are deployed to help ensure peace during the vote in the Central African nation, where wars in 1998–2002 attracted troops from at least seven nations in a regional battle to control vast mineral resources.

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