DR Congo opposition hits at delay in problem-strewn election

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | Opposition leaders in DR Congo lashed the third postponement in the country’s presidential elections on Friday as a deadly plane crash added to the ballot’s woes.

An Antonov 26 chartered by the national electoral commission to deliver election material crashed on Thursday near Kinshasa, officials said.

The plane, operated by the company Gomair, was about to land at the capital’s airport after flying to the central city of Tshikapa where it delivered “election results forms,” a spokesman at the Independent National Election Commission (CENI) said.

Accounts of the numbers onboard and the casualty toll varied.

An official with air traffic control in Tshikapa, the capital of Kasai district, said all six people onboard — five crew and one passenger — had died.

But in Moscow, Russia’s ambassador to the DRC, Alexei Senteboff, was quoted by news agencies as saying “sadly, it is confirmed that all three (crew members) died, and they are Russian citizens.”

Earlier, he said there were “unconfirmed figures” of 23 aboard, “including three crew members of Russian nationality.”

Presidential, legislative and provincial elections were due to have been held in the vast, volatile country on Sunday, defusing a two-year-old crisis over the future of President Joseph Kabila.

But on Thursday CENI ordered a week-long postponement, saying a fire at a warehouse last week had destroyed electronic voting machines and ballot papers earmarked for the capital.

The delay will enable CENI to get replacement ballot papers from the South Korean firm supplying the equipment, the panel’s chief, Corneille Nangaa, said.

“The electoral process continues,” he promised.

But in a country that has never experienced a peaceful handover of government since the end of Belgian colonial rule in 1960, suspicions of foul play run deep.

“Joseph Kabila does not want to leave power or organise elections,” an alliance of parties backing opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi declared on Friday.

“Any further postponement, even a single day” beyond the new date of December 30 “will not be accepted,” the coalition, CACH, warned.

Martin Fayulu, another opposition frontrunner, said: “No delay can be justified.”

Kabila and Nangaa will bear “full responsibility for this charade,” he said on Thursday.

His statement was also signed by two major figures who have been barred from contesting the election — the exiled former governor of Katanga province, Moise Katumbi, and former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba.

However, there was no report of any violence in the aftermath of CENI’s announcement. Dozens of people have been killed by the security forces in anti-Kabila protests in the past two years.

– Kabila’s future –

A long history of political turmoil, bloodshed and dictatorship explains the tension behind the elections.

Since 1996, the Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered two major wars that left millions of dead, and two ongoing conflicts in the centre and east of the country that have caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

In 2016, the spectre of instability rose once more as Kabila kept the nation guessing about his future.

Kabila took office in 2001 after succeeding his assassinated father.