Final Stage of Election in Congo Holds Hopes of Many for Peace

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Congo Votes
First election in 40 years results in frequent, intense battles in Kinshasa neighborhoods. Incumbent Joseph Kabila is declared official winner in runoff.

And so, the elections have been greeted in eastern Congo as a chance at lasting peace.

On Thursday, the lines at the election commission office grew longer and sweatier as the day wore on.

Here was Angalia Kifene, an evangelical minister who was chased from his village three times by militiamen who came looting and killing, and Gilbert Banyawesize, who had to flee his village twice, and Mugenzi Isaac, at the moment a farmer without a farm. Isaac had walked through the dawn to get his voting card and was waiting now, more defiant than downtrodden.

"I have no farm now because it's been taken over by Nkunda's forces," Isaac said angrily, referring to Laurent Nkunda, perhaps the most notorious warlord here. Nkunda's militias forced Isaac to flee to Goma, where he makes what money he can these days carrying luggage for U.N. officials or wealthy businessmen passing through. "We hope if we have a responsible president, we will be able to go home."

As the last-minute scramble for voting cards went on, minivans plastered with Kabila's face and loaded with supporters -- often paid with lunch -- zoomed around the dusty streets. Many other vans advertising the provincial candidates -- in Goma, there are no fewer than 143 vying for three seats -- sped around blaring Congolese music as a voice from a loudspeaker urged people to vote for No. 53, or No. 61, or No. 72.

Nkunda's party, which once controlled a vast swath of the east, lost heavily in the first round of voting. Although some provincial candidates remain affiliated with his party, very few have openly advertised the fact in the last few days before the election, instead posting big smiling photos of Kabila on the vans, a sign of the warlord's waning power.

Indeed, whether the losers accept the results -- or whether the winner is able to fold them into the new government -- remains an open question in eastern Congo, as well as in Kinshasa, where forces loyal to Bemba and Kabila clashed after the first round of voting and elsewhere in recent days.

And beyond the announcement of results next month, a more complicated matter remains: governing a country where most institutions of democracy remain weak. Many Congolese have no access to courts. Some agencies and many of the soon-to-be-created provincial legislatures, which will manage 40 percent of the country's revenue, according to the new constitution, do not yet have physical buildings.

The bureau of information in Goma, for instance, consists of a room with three dangling light bulbs and four donated desks. Recently, three men, reading newspapers, seemed simply to have dropped by.

"Three years ago, no one would have believed we would have gotten this far," said Jason Stearns, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. "But the U.N., regional leaders, the Congolese, while they've been successful in organizing the election, they haven't been successful in creating other trappings of democracy. You can't just vote and go home."

At the moment, at least, residents of Goma say they are ready.

Throughout the day Friday, hundreds of Congolese poll watchers turned up at the election commission office to get their accreditation. Thousands more gathered at a plywood electoral commission stand set up at the center of town. They were there for their voting cards, and a commission official called their names from a megaphone: "Mongane! Muhindo! Mutubaze! Muindo! Mumbere!"

Among the handful of workers there was Mbalamiramwira Mukenge, born, he said, in 1978. Forced into one rebel group, he switched to another, then went back to the first, and in recent months decided he had had enough of it all.

He went to a government demobilization center, where he renounced the life of a soldier in return for a promised $300. When he arrived in Goma to get the money, however, he received only $25. With his home village still under the control of a militia, he roamed the city until he found a place to sleep.

One recent morning, officials found him curled up at the electoral commission stand and gave him a job as a guard.

"I'm hoping with the election coming that we'll have peace in the country," said Mukenge, adding that he wants to resume his studies and become a teacher. "Maybe I will be someone in the future government."