DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Campaigning for presidential run-off gets under way in Congo

Record ID: 346249

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Campaigning for presidential run-off gets under way in Congo
  • Date: 16th October 2006
  • Summary: KINSHASA WITH ELECTORAL POSTER FOR BEMBA
  • Embargoed: 31st October 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAEDWF5O9N6HGN53HPF9LGPAHWK
  • Story Text: Campaigning for a decisive presidential run-off got under way in Congo at the weekend following attacks on candidates' staff and property that heralded a turbulent electoral battle.
    Campaign teams working for President Joseph Kabila and his rival, Vice President and former rebel chief Jean-Pierre Bemba, fanned out across the Democratic Republic of Congo to drum up support from voters for the Oct. 29 poll.
    In the capital Kinshasa and other cities and towns of the vast, former Belgian colony, the rival camps put up fresh campaign posters, organised rallies and rolled out new TV broadcasts extolling their candidates' virtues.
    The run-off is meant to crown a three-year peace process following Congo's 1998-2003 war, which sucked in neighbouring states and caused a humanitarian crisis that has killed over 4 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
    A first round of voting, Congo's first free polls in more than 40 years, went ahead generally peacefully on July 30, protected by more than 17,000 U.N. troops, the world body's biggest peacekeeping mission. The elections are costing the international community around $500 million.
    But fighting in Kinshasa in August between soldiers loyal to Kabila and Bemba, the first round frontrunners, killed at least 30 people and have put foreign peacekeepers on high alert for potential trouble in the run-off.
    People in the capital fear that fighting could resume if results are not accepted by one of the rival camps.
    "We are at the second round, but we already know who is going to win and we don't want no bloodshed," Kishasa resident Jimmi Muepu said.
    In a mission to Congo this weekend, a top U.N. official appealed to both candidates to keep their campaigns peaceful.
    His public plea came days after members of Kabila's staff were beaten up in London while trying to address Congolese residents there. Kabila's spokesman blamed the attack on Bemba's supporters in Britain.
    Bemba's camp rejected the charges. It in turn complained that armed commandos had destroyed a pro-Bemba television station transmitter in Katanga province, a southern Kabila stronghold, on Thursday (October 12).
    The U.N. mission also moved to defuse a row over a helicopter belonging to Bemba which was destroyed by Kabila's forces during several days of gunbattles that rocked the riverside capital in August, when the run-off was announced.
    The fighting highlighted the potential threat to the upcoming polls posed by the private armies of both candidates.
    Kabila's electoral strength in the Swahili-speaking east and Bemba's visible support in Kinshasa and the Lingala-speaking west have sharpened fears of a dangerous east-west split.
    Bemba's camp said the loss of the helicopter put its candidate at a disadvantage so the U.N. mission said it would provide transport for both men.
    Lunda Dululu told Reuters why the M.L.C. party was supporting Bemba, "The problems of yesterday are not the same as the problems of today. We must a have responsible political actor. We must declare our political position for the sake of the best interests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and its people. Friends of the party and I have decided that we will support Jean Pierre Bemba."
    Despite major logistical and security challenges, nearly 18 million Congolese voted in the end-July first round in polls hailed as a historic success by international peacekeepers.
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