16 October 2011 - Congolese Women Speak Out:
UK pays £22.5 million for 'questionable' Democratic Republic of Congo election

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Police clash with opposition supporters as they try to disperse a rally by supporters of Democratic Republic of Congo's during the build up for the election.

Britain is the biggest aid donor to the DRC and officials have insisted the government is determined to ensure that next month's election is not rigged by President Joseph Kabila.

Mr Kabila, who inherited power from his father, won the country's first democratic election in 2006 and is standing for re-election on November 27.

Activists have expressed fears that the 40-year old, who has already changed the constitution to improve his re-election chances, is determined to win re-election by stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent votes.

Such an outcome would be a serious setback for democracy in Africa and call into question the government's commitment to spend £790 million in the country
Congolese activists have called on Britain to safeguard its aid by sending electoral observers to ensure voting at the country's 60,000 polling station's conforms to election standards. Britain is sending just 5 observers through the EU which has cut its number of monitors to 112 from 300 in 2006.

"Without your help I fear that violence on the roads will keep many women away from the polling stations," said Jose Musau Kalanda of the It Must Stop campaign. "My greatest fear of all is that the election result will not be accepted by any of the candidates. Disputed results in this new democracy could lead to further outbreaks of violence. Further violence will affect the women and the children of the Congo terribly."

Ackys Kituba, a member of FreeFairDRC said: "It is vital that these elections are free, fair, open and democratic. It is a chance for our country to grow our young and fragile democracy but this will only happen if the international community does more to assist to the people of the Congo as they go to the polls in November."

However a spokesman for the Department of International Development denied that Britain was failing the cause of democracy in the Congo.

"Britain is committed to helping the DRC have free and fair elections. We are working with internationally-recognised monitoring experts in the EU and the Carter Center to ensure a high-quality network of observers will be in the country before, during and after the election," the spokesman said.

"We are pushing DRC's electoral commission to ensure all parties have scrutiny of the electoral roll and to publish full voter lists on its website and in registration centres. All double entries, whether added through human error or otherwise, must be scrutinised locally and amended. Election monitors are crucial to this process."

But neither Britain or the United Nations mission in the DRC, which acts as sponsor of the election system, has been able to secure a review of the electoral role despite a leaked audit suggesting hundreds of thousands of non-existent voters had been registered.

The leaked survey obtained by Zetes, a Belgian firm that issued biometric polling cards, found that more than 700,000 so called "doublons" had been added to the list in just five provinces.

In another province the numbers on the roll amounted to 110 per cent of the estimated voting age population.
While the report was filed to the government in early August, officials ruled it was too late to clean up the roll without causing a delay in the election.

Victoria Dove Dimandja -
Congolese Human Right Campaigner
Liberation Congolese Women Group