Allegations of vote tampering in election marred by violence
LONG queues, broken-down machines and torrential rain in the capital disrupted voting in Democratic Republic of Congo’s long-anticipated presidential poll yesterday, as officials scrambled to deploy missing voters rolls.
Three opposition strongholds will see no casting of ballots at all after the authorities cancelled the vote there, citing health risks from an ongoing Ebola outbreak and ethnic violence.
Some polling places in the capital Kinshasa had not yet opened more than six hours after the 6am start.
Elections are a rare event in Congo, plagued by authoritarian rule, assassinations, coups and civil wars since independence from Belgium in 1960.
If President Joseph Kabila, in power since his father’s assassination in 2001, steps down after the vote it will be the country’s first democratic transition. Kabila voted in Kinshasa at the same school as the candidate he is backing, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, whom the latest opinion polls showed trailing two opposition candidates.
The Catholic bishops conference said voting had not started on time at 830 polling stations, equivalent to about one-fifth of the stations across the country. It also said 846 polling stations were installed in “prohibited places” like military and police posts.
“Some (voters) don’t know how to use the machines,” said voter Kayembe Mvita Dido, referring to the new electronic voting system, criticised by the opposition as vulnerable to fraud.
Several machines broke down in Kinshasa, Goma and Bukavu, bringing voting to a halt in some places. Some voters complained they could not find their names on the rolls, and flooded Kinshasa streets prevented others from reaching their polling stations.
In the Kinshasa district of Limete, an opposition stronghold, voting had not begun in at least nine polling stations as of 12.30pm because voting rolls had not arrived, a witness said.
Militia fighters in eastern Congo’s Masisi territory were also reported around polling sites, pressuring people to vote for their preferred candidates, a Western diplomat said.
“We have some issues,” electoral commission (CENI) spokesman JeanPierre Kalamba said on state television. “When a problem arises… We’re choosing the lesser evil.”
Despite repeated election delays, diplomats and poll observers say authorities are ill-prepared, raising fears of a repeat of the violence after 2006 and 2011 polls. Critics doubt the vote will be untarnished by fraud. BANGLADESH’S Election Commission is investigating allegations of vote rigging coming from across the country, a spokesperson said yesterday, as polling for a general election marred by violence ended and counting began.
Clashes between supporters of the ruling Awami League and its opponents killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 20, police said, amid reports that more than three dozen opposition candidates complaining of alleged vote rigging had pulled out of the first competitive poll in the country in a decade.
The Election Commission said it would act if rigging was confirmed, even as at least three voters in southeast Bangladesh, including a journalist, said they were barred from entering polling booths or were told their ballot papers had already been filled in.
The election is expected to be won by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, giving her a third straight term in office.
Mahbub Talukdar, one of the five election commissioners who stirred a controversy last week by saying there was no level playing field for the parties, said he did not see any opposition polling agents near the Dhaka booth where he voted, suggesting they had been kept away.
Clashes broke out between workers of the Awami League and its opponents, led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
At least six candidates fighting against the Awami League withdrew from the contest in Khulna, a divisional headquarters 300km southwest of Dhaka. Media reports said more than 40 out of 287 opposition candidates pulled out, alleging vote rigging.
The BNP boycotted the last election in 2014, claiming it wouldn’t be free and fair. The party has been hobbled by the absence of its chairwoman Khaleda, 74, who has been in jail since February on corruption charges, which she says are politically motivated.
At a polling booth yesterday, some voters were afraid to comment on the polls, describing an atmosphere of fear.
A middle-aged businessman, who declined to be named, said: “I am here to vote, but my family says, ‘what’s the point? The ruling party will come back in power in any case’.”