US urges pressure to ensure Dec 23 DRC vote
NEW YORK - US Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the Security Council on Monday to use pressure if necessary to ensure that long-delayed presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo take place on December 23.
She denounced the use of force by DRC government against opposition demonstrators and demanded that Congolese authorities release political prisoners and guarantee freedom of expression and assembly.
Haley also warned that the country’s electoral commission’s decision to use an electronic voting system for the first time without it ever being tested in DRC poses “enormous risk” and “has the potential to seriously undermine the credibility of elections”.
Electoral Commission president Corneille Nangaa said using voting machines that enable every voter to print a ballot before putting it into a ballot box will save $123 million, lowering the cost of holding the election to about $432 million from the initial estimates of $555 million.
Ida Sawyer, the Central Africa director for Human Rights Watch, warned that voting machines could be used fraudulently.
“Over the past three years President (Joseph) Kabila and those around him have used one delaying tactic after another to postpone elections and entrench their hold on power through voter repression and largescale violence,” abetted by “systemic corruption,” she told the council.
DRC’s foreign minister, Leonard She Okitundu, said his country was being unfairly characterised.
“The Democratic Republic of Congo is not hell for human rights as it is being wrongly presented,” he said. “Rather it faces, like many other great democracies, the difficulty of balancing law and order with public security and respect for individual liberties.”
Haley, who presided over the council meeting, had the final word and stressed that the international community wants to help DRC to see a peaceful transition of power.–