From: omolo.ouko
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News

BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011

As tensions and spirits are running high in the Democratic Republic of Congo where 11 presidential candidates are struggling to lead the country with $24 trillion of known mineral deposits and 80 percent of all known coltan reserves required for every mobile phone, computer, games consol and TV, the big question we are asking is whether Africa is heading towards failed states.

In almost all African countries, addressing electoral fraud and violence is becoming a major problem on the continent. In many African countries most elections are not free and fair because they are rigged in favour of the incumbent president.

In Gambia President Yahya Jammeh has already proclaimed that neither an election nor a coup can shake his grip on power, meaning that it is certain he is going retain power by all means. Ecowas had predicted the poll would not be free and fair because of high levels of intimidation by the ruling party.

President Yahya Jammeh who seized power in a coup in 1994 and has won three widely criticised elections since then has been accused of intolerance to both criticism and dissent. Mr Jammeh, 46, was facing Ousainou Darboe, leader of the United Democratic Party (UDP), and Hamat Bah, who has being backed by a coalition of four opposition parties.

Similar case was with Uganda elections where President Yoweri Museveni who has been in power for 25 years vowed to stop any street protests and warned that Egyptian-style demonstrations could not happen in Uganda. It meant he would retain power by all means.

Museveni altered the constitution to allow him to run for another five-year term and his reason for running for another 5 years was on a platform of combating terrorism and extremism and maintaining stability in the key East African nation.

Museveni won despite the fact that African Union election observers said the polls suffered from severe shortcomings, and could not be described as free and fair. Other international observers also criticised the election process.

Opposition Forum for Democratic Change leader Dr Kizza Besigye who is currently in the United States of America to seek medical attention following days of reported ill health, claimed victory but was rigged out in favour of Museveni.

Besigye was clobbered and sprayed with irritant pepper spray to near blindness by police officers at the height of the walk-to-work demonstrations in April this year. This is the second time since May that Dr Besigye has flown to the US on medical grounds.

Share This Story

He is being treated for injuries he sustained from that violent arrest after he was hauled unconscious onto the back of a police pick-up truck. He was treated at Nairobi Hospital where he spent at least one week before returning to Uganda.

Similar cases have been witnessed in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Ivory Coast, leading to political unrest in these countries, and the forging of marriages that never were. In Ivory Coast about 3,000 people were killed and 500,000 displaced in the unrest after the November 2010 poll. Alassane Ouattara took power in April after a four-month stand-off with his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to accept defeat.

Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council had declared Laurent Gbagbo, president, the winner run-off elections, overturning earlier results that gave victory to Alassane Ouattara, the opposition candidate and a former prime minister.

Like Ivory Coast Kenya also suffered its worst electoral violence following the December 2007 results of a hotly-contested presidential election. Opposition leader Raila Odinga and his supporters rejected the declared victory of incumbent Mwai Kibaki, alleging it was the result of rampant rigging.

More than 1,200 people were killed and some 350,000 displaced into temporary camps, with an equal number seeking refuge with friends or relatives. Agricultural activity was seriously hampered as farmers moved away from their fields, posing long-terms risks for the country’s food security.

Similar story was also in Liberia where recent presidential election was thrown into deadly chaos after at least two people were shot dead. The violence broke out when at least 100 Liberian security forces and UN peacekeepers descended on the Congo Town area of Monrovia, where they secured the perimeter of the CDC headquarters, setting up roadblocks to redirect traffic.

Incidents of political related chaos and violence also continued to rock the Lake regions with two days before Tanzanians cast their votes. In one incident, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) secretary in Burunga ward, Serengeti District, Mara Region, Mr Emmanuel Nyarata was attacked and badly wounded by his fellow party members on allegations of being a traitor.

In Nigeria the violence left at least 500 people dead and several thousand injured and displaced. In these countries, post election violence has destroyed the lives of many people, mostly the poor and vulnerable, taking away their wealth, health, livelihoods and in some cases their lives.

In Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe has vowed the next polls will take place before March next year, the Finance Minister, Mr Tendai Biti has been used to convince Zimbabweans to vote for Mogabe because if re-elected he will ensure the economy will grow by more than nine percent next year.

Although according to Biti the economic growth will be fueld by continued recovery and increased mining activity, Zimbabwe faced international opposition to sales of its alluvial diamonds because human rights activists say the military killed and beat many people while seizing control of the diamond fields in 2008.

The fact however remains, that even with increased revenue, Zimbabwe will still continue to face major economic problems. The country has a foreign debt of $7 billion and survives on tax revenues, as it cannot raise loans. More than half of the budget is for public service worker salaries.

Even in Zambia where elections have been described as free and fair, incidences of stone-throwing mobs smashed cars and blocking roads during voting were reported. This happened after opposition leader Michael Sata accused President Rupiah Banda’s rival camp of rigging the ballot.

Crowds of mainly young people set flaming tyres in the streets, smashed cars belonging to elections officials, set buses alight, and threw stones at police who tried to charge the mobs from their vehicles.

Sata won probably because the campaign for his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) centred on growth and development. Nicknamed “King Cobra”, Sata attacked Banda as soft on corruption and criticised him for failing to do more to spread the wealth in a country where 64 percent of people still live on less than $2 a day.

Even Benin where the Beninese citizens took to the polls on March 13, 2011 to re-elect President, Thomas Yayi Boni to serve a second term in office, elections were to be postponed twice after problems with voter registration, which according to the opposition leaders was one way to rig elections.

Despite the fact that the Republic of Benin is a small state in West Africa with a population of 8.5 million, since the first multi-party election which took place in 1991, Benin has had five Presidents. This leaves a lot to be desired.

Observers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) declared the elections free and fair but shared concerns with the African Union (AU) about the late opening of voting stations.

And in Ghana where a movie on Ghana’s 2008 General Elections has been released, featuring Nana Akufo-Addo, John Atta Mills, Jerry Rawlings, John Kufuor, Afari-Gyan, Kwesi Pratt, Hannah Tetteh, Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and Kwabena Agyepong, among others, and it has received great reviews across the globe, with the Los Angeles Times describing the documentary feature film as “the gripping examination of Ghana’s 2008 presidential contest on display,” when it comes to elections similar problems arise.

The film which premiered in London this week is aptly titled, “An African Election”. The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind the scenes at the complex political machinery of a third-world democracy struggling to legitimise itself.

The movie portrays how perilously close we got to unleashing electoral violence as it shows footage of young teenagers being trained as militias with wooden guns wearing NDC T-Shirts.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Assin North, Kennedy Agyepong has already issued a stern warning to the National Democratic Congress saying if the ruling party does not abandon plans to rig the 2012 elections, Ghana would be like Rwanda where an estimated 800,000 died in genocide.

Hon. Agyepong’s comments come in the wake of threats by Communications Director at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho that the NDC would deal with the flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo if he dares incite people ahead of the 2012 elections.

In DRC, even though in the ground Étienne Tshisekedi is very popular and liked by the vast majority of 71 million Congolese, it almost certain that Monday November 28, 2011 elections President Joseph Kabila will emerge the winner.

As one way to rig the election, Kabila was forced to use parliamentarians to amend the constitution, removing the “Presidential runoff vote to be with simple majority” in an attempt to make it easier for him to stay in power. Etienne campaign team have alleged that Kabila used $25,000 to his MPs, and more $50,000 for opposition parliamentarians earlier this year to pass the law.

Etienne is the most liked candidate due to his campaign strategy that give promise that when elected he will implement new anti-corruption laws governing public sector officials and create an effective judicial system to prosecute individuals accused of crimes on DRC home soil, a promise Kabila has never fulfilled. Currently judicial system is pathetic.

Etienne who boycotted the 2006 election, saying it had been rigged also aims at working with the International Criminal Court and international community to build a justice system that is capable of bringing sound and transparent justice to those who commit the most terrible crimes in Congo. He believes it is only this policy that will help bring peace to the Eastern provinces of the Congo.

He has also promised he will ensure that the Congolese Justice system must be strong enough to face down corruption in DRC. Currently corruption is said to be holding back economic growth in the country.

Another preferable candidate is former Kabila’s campaign manager, Vital Kamerhe- he is 52, making him to be one of the youngest candidates. He has not only been largely credited for Kabila’s election victory in 2006 but also breaking with Kabila’s PPRD party in 2009 after voicing his disapproval of an executive order that allowed Rwandan troops to operate within the country without parliament’s knowledge or approval. He was once the speaker of the National Assembly.

Kabila’s campaign strategy on creating employment and rural electrification if re-elected has been challenged-people are asking why he has not done this since 2001 when he took power from his father. Roads are in pathetic situation and are impassable.

His rapprochement with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2008 has also angered many Congolese who see their tiny neighbour as the cause of the continuing unrest in Congo’s rebel-infested east, where rape and other abuses by gunmen remain common.

His resistance to reopen the unfinished investigation into the 2001 assassination of his father Laurent, for which 50 people remain behind bars has also made Congolese to lose trust in him.

Laurent Kabila was shot by a member of his own staff in his office at the presidential palace in Kinshasa in 2001 as part of a coup attempt. He died in Zimbabwe a week later.

The murderer, Rashidi Kasereka, was shot dead shortly after the attack and a small group of the presidential guard escaped the DRC. The real circumstances of President Kabila’s death and who was responsible are still murky questions, with several conflicting explanations being circulated.

Continuous violence in the country including rape of women has also led to Kabila’s unpopularity. Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been raped at a rate 26 times higher than previously thought. The shockingly high number is equivalent to 1,152 women raped every day, 48 raped every hour, or four women raped every five minutes.

More than 400,000 women ages 15 to 49 were raped across all provinces of the DR Congo during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study, “Estimates and Determinants of Sexual Violence Against Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” represents the first-ever estimates of sexual violence in DRC based on rigorous examination of government-collected and nationally representative data.

Sexual violence occurred in all provinces, the study shows, while the number of women raped at least once in the eastern conflict area of North Kivu—67 per 1,000—is more than double the national average of 29 per 1,000. That means a woman in certain parts of the Congo is 134 times more likely to be raped. Rates of rape in other provinces show that Congo’s sexual violence pandemic is not limited to armed-conflict zones.

People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
P O Box 14877
Nairobi
00800, Westlands
Kenya

Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578
E-mail- ppa@africaonline.co.ke
omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Website: www.peopleforpeaceafrica.org