by Patson Phiri – SANF 06 No 76
The election runoff in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now in doubt after a ruling by the Supreme Court that the 29 October date contradicts the new constitution.
Some opposition parties challenged the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the date for the rerun versus the provisions in the new Constitution.
The new electoral law states that the second round of the presidential elections shall be held within 15 days after the announcement of the initial election results.
The petition that was filed on 5 September— the day the Supreme Court was expected to announce the final results— raises uncertainty on the peace process for a country that is transiting from a five-year civil war.
The Supreme Court ruled that the date set by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) breaks the new electoral law that was promulgated in May this year.
The shock ruling, passed on 13 September, came as the two candidates in the second round of the votes—Joseph Kabila and Jean Pierre Bemba— held a two-hour meeting to ease tension that resulted from the announcement of the preliminary election results of the initial 29 July election.
The announcement of the results of the initial election sparked violence that left 23 people dead in the capital Kinshansa.
The IEC plans to appeal against the ruling citing logistical difficulties in organising polls at such short notice in this vast country.
“We have to provide 60,000 electoral kits in nearly 50,000 polling stations, we have to print the ballot papers and distribute them around a vast territory.”
“It all takes a long time,” IEC spokesman Dieudonne Mirimo said after the ruling.
The Supreme Court did not name the petitioners when it withheld the final election results on 5 September, the day it made the announcement that it had been petitioned.
The election was widely expected to restore permanent peace and pave the way for change from a transitional government to a democratically elected administration.
President Kabila has been leading a transitional government that was put together via the April 2003 power sharing agreement signed in South Africa.
Kabila and former rebel leader Bemba, led the initial polls but failed to amass the required 50 percent-plus-one votes, facilitating an election rerun.
The DRC Constitution requires that a presidential candidate must amass 50 percent-plus-one vote of total votes cast in a national election to be declared as president.
Kabila won 44.81 percent of the vote, while Bemba had 20.03 percent.
The election attracted over 70 percent of the 25.6 million registered voters.
This was the first democratic election in the vast mineral-rich country in about 46 years since independence from Belgium in 1960.
The last democratic poll was in 1960 that led to the election of the government of the late Patrice Lumumba.
Subsequent attempts to hold democratic elections have faltered, slowing down prospects for economic development in this wealthy country.
The failure to install a democratic government has put DRC on a rough ride blocking it from tapping its wealth since the 1960s when Lumumba was assassinated.
Kabila’s transitional government has pushed for an economic stabilisation programme since May 2001 – a few months after coming to power.
This has helped the DRC achieve relative economic success over the past few years.
The stabilisation programme has reduced inflation, renewed mining activity and increased foreign direct investment.
The reforms, which have had the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), included liberalisation of petroleum prices and exchange rates, and adoption of fiscal and monetary policy discipline.
The country’s annualised inflation rate, once one of the highest in the world, declined from more than 500 percent in 2000 to around seven percent in 2003.
The country has since June 2002 been able to access credit from the IMF and the World Bank, while other bilateral donors have pledged to fund development and reconstruction projects.
The Paris Club also granted the DRC Highly Indebted Poor Country status in July 2003, a development that has helped to alleviate Kinshasa’s external debt burden and freed funds for economic development.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was over five percent in 2005, with an estimated total GDP of US$7.2 billion and per capita GDP of US$120.
Bemba, 43, is one of the vice-presidents in the current transitional government and is responsible for the economic and finance portfolio.
Together with Kabila, they have overseen implementation of the economic recovery programme but the two political giants are now battling to win the elections and lead the country to further prosperity.
The political instability in the DRC has mainly centred on economic management and control of the country’s mineral resources.
