In Whirlwind of an Election in Congo, Votes May Become Victims, Too

Preliminary results showing a big victory for the opposition were posted at a polling place in the capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday.



KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — A volatile combination of suspicion, shootings, political clashes and voting breakdowns continued in Congo on Tuesday, the second day of nationwide elections, with some areas still casting ballots, others counting votes and initial results showing a big victory for the opposition here in the capital.

Congo’s election commission, which is run by a friend of President Joseph Kabila, is now threatening to disqualify tens of thousands of opposition votes, a surefire recipe for disaster, analysts say, one that set off widespread bloodshed in Ivory Coast during a similar, disputed election situation last year.

Many polling places in Kinshasa looked as if a hurricane had just barreled through them. Desks were upturned, torn-up ballots were tossed on the ground and crushed plastic soda bottles were everywhere, residue from a chaotic day of voting on Monday. Haggard-looking poll workers, party agents and bystanders slumped in the corners of dingy rooms after pulling all-nighters to witness the ballots’ being counted, one by one, hand by hand, usually by lantern light.

Many people here are deeply suspicious that Mr. Kabila, who has been in power for 10 years and is reviled in many quarters, is trying to steal the election.

“There is no way Kabila can win,” said Kabeya Mukendi Muya, a towering man who spent 29 hours straight at the polling place where he voted, making sure that the ballot boxes were not stuffed.

“He’s an assassin!” yelled another man, who then listed all the people the president’s security forces are widely believed to have gunned down in recent days.

Congo’s political temperature seems to be rising by the day. This is only the second time this vast and war-ravaged country has held anything resembling a democratic vote.

“And it was a mess,” declared one European Union election observer, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Reports streamed in on Tuesday of polling places that had no ballots, and of millions of people turned away from the polls because of administrative errors. Many witnesses said that election officials had tried to sneak in fraudulent ballots; in some cases, mobs of young men viciously beat the officials and then burned the ballots.

Western donors, who supply Congo with billions of dollars of aid each year, had urged Congolese officials to delay the vote. But the Congolese government decided last week to plow ahead and frustrations are exploding across the country, with more than a dozen people killed and countless others seriously wounded in election-related clashes.

“Problematic,” was the word used by John Stremlau, a leader of the Carter Center’s monitoring delegation, to describe the election so far. But he also said it had been inspiring to see so many people lined up at the polls on Monday, many of them soaked by an equatorial thunder shower while waiting outside.

Countless Congolese have said they were driven to the polls by despair. Mr. Kabila, whose mellow, almost shy demeanor belies a more steely and repressive side, has presided over Congo’s steady slide in the past few years; it is now ranked as the least developed country on earth. His government has been accused of pocketing billions of dollars in corrupt business deals and depriving the Congolese people of their own natural riches — staggering reserves of copper, cobalt, diamonds and gold.

Eastern Congo, where the biggest spoils are, is still overrun by marauding militias, and on Monday many former fighters stripped off their camouflage, donned civilian clothes and served as agents for militias-turned-political parties.

“People are very worried about what the results will be and how the political parties will react,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who spoke from Goma, in the east. “This population has gone through 15 years of violence and they know how these things can explode.”

The election commission threatened on Tuesday to cancel votes in places where opposition supporters had attacked government agents, if the violence continues. The commission, led by Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, a Methodist preacher and longtime ally of Mr. Kabila, listed several cities racked by violence. Just about all of them were opposition strongholds where most of the votes would go to Etienne Tshisekedi, a 78-year-old rabble-rouser and the leading presidential challenger. The threat seemed to add fuel to the fire, as many opposition supporters saw it as a thinly-veiled government plot to steal votes.

Mr. Tshisekedi, who has been active in Congolese politics since the 1960s, seems to be on his way to a strong lead in Kinshasa. Early results tacked up at more than a dozen polling places showed him leading Mr. Kabila by a margin of about three to one.

Analysts expected Mr. Kabila, 40, to lose handily in the capital, just like he did in 2006, Congo’s first truly democratic vote. But back then Mr. Kabila was reasonably popular elsewhere in the country, especially in the east, where he earned the millions of votes that ultimately carried him to victory.

This time around, the east has its own local champion, Vital Kamerhe, a well-educated former speaker of Parliament, who seemed to be siphoning many votes away from Mr. Kabila. On Tuesday, Mr. Kamerhe said the vote had been so fraudulent that it should be annulled.

A winner is supposed to be declared by Dec. 6, when Mr. Kabila’s term wraps up. Many analysts say a fiercely disputed election could put Congo’s Western allies, including the United States, in a tight spot because if Mr. Kabila relies on fraud to hold onto power, mayhem could follow. But at the same time, the Western governments may be reluctant to side with Mr. Tshisekedi, who is viewed as a loose cannon and a prickly person to do business with.