By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 29, 2006
GOMA, Congo, Oct. 28 -- By 8 a.m. Thursday, several dozen people had already lined up at the election commission office. Some had walked miles in leather loafers or flip-flops, ridden bicycles with skinny tires across lumpy dirt roads or traveled by car through the rolling green jungle.
Then they waited. They explained. They argued. They walked to a different election office across town, and back again. At last, lucky Augistin Busaka reached the plastic orange table inside the old stone building where stacks of handwritten lists spilled onto towers of cards and more lists. He handed an election worker a letter of introduction that began, "Dear Sirs," which he hoped would help him obtain the coveted prize: a voting card.
"I want peace," he said, explaining that his farm remains in the hands of one of several militia groups fighting in the palmy mountains around here. "Whatever it costs. If I have to walk 60 kilometers, I'm going to walk it, just to vote."
There is an exuberant, if fragile, sense in eastern Congo these days that the country is inching toward one of the most significant moments in its post-colonial history.
In the culmination of the first multiparty elections in 40 years, tens of millions of people are expected at the polls Sunday for the runoff vote for president and to elect, for the first time, provincial legislators tasked with bringing democracy closer to people who have seen decades of epic corruption and two ruthless wars.
The process has been largely peaceful, the result of a massive logistical effort by the United Nations, which has deployed 17,500 peacekeepers; international donors, who have given $450 million; and mainly, the Congolese themselves.
The Congolese Independent Election Commission has managed the mind-boggling, largely pen-and-paper task of registering 60 million voters across a mostly roadless country the size of the United States east of the Mississippi. Through posters, music and even theater, election workers have explained such basics as how to mark a ballot, a task that continued until nightfall Saturday in Goma, a dirt-street town of wooden kiosks and markets.
Although an estimated 70 percent of registered voters turned out for the first round of elections in July, in this eastern province alone nearly 37,000 ballots were voided. Some people, for instance, had seized a long-awaited chance to express themselves, writing, "You fool!" next to the picture of a despised candidate or, "You are my savior, I love you so much!" next to a favored one.
"People drew faces on the candidates and things like that," said Jason Luneno, who leads a group that promotes good governance and educates voters in Goma. "So all that was an expression of anger. . . . Our job is to sensitize people not to do that again. So with all that, we hope the election will be successful."
In general, the Congolese seem to be sharply divided between the two presidential candidates. The western half of the country, including the capital, Kinshasa, voted heavily in the first round for Jean-Pierre Bemba, a businessman from that region.
Here in the war-ravaged east, people voted overwhelming for Joseph Kabila, whose father, Laurent Kabila, led a rebellion in 1997 that toppled Mobutu Sese Seko, who, with U.S. support, ruled the country by force for 37 years. By some estimates, he looted billions from the government of this nation abundant with diamonds and minerals.
The younger Kabila took power after his father was assassinated in 2001 and in the east is generally credited with helping to end major fighting among various militias. Some of the groups have demobilized, others have been integrated into the national army, and some still roam here, seeming to have settled into a routine of brutal violence. Human rights groups estimate that 4 million people have died as a result of the fighting since 1998. And even now more than 1,000 die daily because of hunger, disease and other consequences of being run into an unforgiving jungle.
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."
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