Central Congo Polls Open for Extra Day

Election volunteers take a nap as they wait for cast ballots to arrive at a central election processing station in Kinshasa, Monday July 31, 2006. Congolese voted Sunday in their first democratic election in more than four decades, many hoping for an end to years of fighting and corrupt rule that have devastated the mineral-rich nation in the heart of Africa. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) (Jerome Delay - AP)

MBUJI-MAYI, Congo -- Polls opened for an extra day Monday in central Congo but it appeared that few took advantage of the second chance to vote in what officials said was a massive boycott called by one candidate.

Electoral officials backed by riot police faced down stone-throwing boycotters to reopen polling stations in the area where many had stayed away in Sunday's election, apparently heeding the boycott call.

Authorities protected by truckloads of armed police had intended to reopen 174 of the 1,041 polling stations in central Congo Monday, said Hubert Tisuaka, an election official. But by the end of the day, it was not clear how many stations had actually opened.

Sunday's vote was for a new president and legislature to replace Congo's transitional administration, which took power after back-to-back wars that lasted from 1996 to 2002. It was the first multiparty election in 45 years of strife and dictatorship in the country the size of Western Europe, whose people remain poor despite the country's diamond and mineral riches.

During Sunday's vote, people who apparently support veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi burned polling stations and voting material in the diamond-mining city of Mbuji-Mayi. Tshisekedi, who has his main support base in the central Kasai region, argued he was not given a fair chance in his presidential bid and had called for a boycott of the elections.

On Monday, militants stoned and beat one electoral official, who was hospitalized, and set fire to the car of another, said election official Nicolas Kalambayi Wa Kalambayi. At least four other electoral workers were injured over the weekend, he said, and a truck full of ballot papers was set ablaze.

The scene Monday underscored the postelection challenge in Congo: persuading a people riven by ethnic and regional disputes and political rivalries that democracy is the best way to resolve their differences.

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

The United States congratulated Congo for overcoming "enormous logistical challenges and threats of intimidation."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the elections a "milestone in the country's peace process," and congratulated the Congolese for the peaceful vote.

Some 17,600 U.N peacekeepers and 2,000 EU troops are deployed to help ensure peace during the vote in the vast Central African nation.

Meanwhile, former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba's party claimed the lead in more than 50 percent of the nation's provinces. His Congolese Liberation Movement said Bemba, a vice president in the postwar administration which arranged the election, had a firm lead in six of Congo's 11 provinces, and was confident of victory.