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Insight

Election in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Aired August 21, 2006 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: Can it save the Congo? The election in the Democratic Republic of Congo is about more than leadership. Millions of people have died. Thousands are still dying. Will the wretched country recover?
Hello and welcome.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is setting records these days. It has the world's largest peacekeeping force, it's holding the largest election ever organized by the United Nations, but it doesn't have nearly enough food or clean water or healthcare or roads or railways, and it's only just emerging from a civil war that drew in the armies of at least five other nations.

The election in Congo matters to 60 million of its own people and millions more across central Africa, more than most elections ever do. It began with more than 30 candidates and now it's down to just two, the president and a rebel leader who became vice president in an effort to keep the peace. And Monday there was fighting in the capital again.

On our program today, a step towards somewhere in the Congo.

We begin with CNN's Jeff Koinange.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the end, he missed an outright majority by a little more than five percentage points. Now former Army Major General Joseph Kabila will have to go back into the political battlefield once again. He'll be facing this man, millionaire businessman Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader and undisputed rebel rouser who garnered just 20 percent of the vote compared to Kabila's 44.8 percent.

Kabila, who was thrust into power after his father's assassination more than five years ago, insists there is still much work to be done in the Congo and he'd like to finish what he started.

JOSEPH KABILA, CONGOLESE PRESIDENT: There are a number of things that have still to be done, quite a number of things. We're talking of reunification, which is a reality, but peace and stability are still a long way away. So we want to make it such that peace and stability become also a reality, especially in the east -- the eastern parts of the country. So, that is one of the major reasons in fact why I'd like to continue over those next five years.

KOINANGE: His challenger also wants nothing more than the ultimate prize, insisting the country deserves better cards than the ones it's been dealt.

JEAN-PIERRE BEMBA, CONGOLESE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I really believe that Congo deserves more than what it is today. I really believe that we can raise Congo to do more than it is doing today in all different sectors: economy, justice, politics, reconstruction, agriculture, health, education. That is really, for me, the main reason why I believe that. Being from that position, I am not fighting for a title. I'm fighting for the tool to enable Congo to be transformed.

KOINANGE: Africa experts, like John Stremlau of the Carter Center, say the runoff in October carries with it plenty of risk.

JOHN STREMLAU, CARTER CTR.: worst cases predominate in the Congo. After all, it has been abused badly by foreigners and by local politicians who have been too selfish. It's time to let the Congolese people have their say, and the problem will be if the losers are bad losers and the winner is not magnanimous.

KOINANGE: In its 50 years as an independent state, Congo has seen plenty of big-man politics and absolutely no power sharing. This election was meant to break that vicious cycle. Not everyone is optimistic it will.

STREMLAU: I think there's going to be a danger from now on forward of the tendency of warlordism to reemerge and for the tough bargaining to turn perhaps violent as a show of force. There will be testing, which is why we have to remain vigilant and why the United Nations forces have to stay here.

KOINANGE: The United Nations estimates an average of 1,200 people die every day in the Congo from war-related incidents, despite a ceasefire among warring factions more than three years ago. The United Nations has its largest peacekeeping mission in the world in the Congo, more than 17,000, backed up by a further 2,000 European Union troops.

The United Nations' top diplomat in the region is quick to outline the importance of Congo getting its house in order.

AMB. WILLIAM LACEY SWING, U.N. SPECIAL REP. TO DRC: This is clearly the heart of Africa. It touches north, west, east and southern Africa, and if the Congo goes right, it's the one situation that will help all of Africa. It can change the face of Africa and the image of Africa.

KOINANGE: The international community has invested in this election with time, money and people. But it's placed all its chips on one outcome.

SWING: These elections are going to cost just over a half billion dollars. Now, that's a lot of money, but it is not a lot of money in terms of the cost of war. There is no turning back. And I can tell you, for the international community, there is no plan B. This is it.

KOINANGE: The alternative is too awful to contemplate: a failed state where millions more die as another generation of big men squabble for turf and wealth.

STREMLAU: Congo's broken badly and it compares to Liberia, only it's 100 times as big, and it compares to Sierra Leone and, similarly, there has been no challenge to the international community, to the United Nations, on a scale of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We all had a hand in its problems. We have to have a hand in its solutions.

KOINANGE: Just as it's richly endowed with dozens of minerals and metals, gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, so Congo is also home to dozens of ethnic and political rivalries, rivalries that will have to be contained when this election is over if the country's natural potential is to be unleashed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Since he prepared that report, Jeff Koinange has now returned to Johannesburg, and there are reports of gunfire in the capital of the Congo, Kinshasa, and that senior diplomats in the Congolese capital are said to be trapped. Among them, the American foreign ambassador and now U.N. special envoy who Jeff interviewed in that report, William Lacey Swing.

Jeff Koinange joins us now with the latest he's been able to gather from his monitoring post.

What are you hearing?

KOINANGE: Well, Jonathan, here's the sequence of events.

Basically, before the election results late Monday there was an altercation between Kabila's bodyguards and Jean-Pierre Bemba's bodyguards. Gunfire ensued. Several people were killed. In fact, as of early this morning there are still bodies in the streets.

Then late this evening elite forces belonging to Kabila went to Jean- Pierre Bemba's home to try to disarm them. This is when heavy gunfire erupted in the streets of the capital in that exclusive neighborhood and foreign diplomats had actually gone to discuss with Bemba the way forward, and they may have been caught in this altercation.

We don't have any reports of any injuries right now, but the United Nations has confirmed that they've sent a contingent of troops to this exclusive neighborhood in Kinshasa to try and rescue the foreign diplomats, Jonathan.

It looks like no doubt the election period, which was very calm, may have just been that, the calm before the proverbial storm.

MANN: Was the result, though, the runoff between Bemba and Kabila, a surprise?

KOINANGE: You know, it depends on who you ask. There are a lot of people who say how could Kabila have miscalculated and not gotten into alliances with some of the opposition candidates in order to guarantee that 50 percent.

But then other experts say, well, if he had gotten more than 50 percent, then a lot of people would have been saying he may have rigged this election.

So, it's a good thing in that it's a good step for democracy. A lot of people are hailing this, saying, OK, it's going to go to a second round. Now, if he does win this second round, it will be seen as more legitimate and more people will accept him. Because you have to remember, especially in the capital, Kinshasa, Kabila is very unpopular. A lot of people view him as a foreigner, the fact that he was born in the eastern part of the country, spent most of his life in neighboring Tanzania, hardly speaks the local language, lingala, a lot of Kinshasa people view him as a foreigner. If he goes on to win the second round, they will see this as more legitimate.

MANN: Jeff Koinange, thanks very much.

We're going to take a break, but before we do, a moment to get back to basics. There are two countries named Congo and among us foreigners some embarrassingly frequent confusion between them. The Democratic Republic of Congo, long-known as Zaire, was a Belgian colony. Its capital, as we've mentioned, is Kinshasa. To its immediate west, though, the much smaller Republic of Congo, a former French colony, sometimes known by the name of its capital, Congo Brazzaville.

We take that break now. When we come back, more on what the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo hope and fear from this vote.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The election results so far suggest a split between two regions of the Congo with different languages and loyalties. President Kabila is strongest in the Swahili-speaking east. Former Vice President Bemba is ahead in lingala-speaking Kinshasa and the west.

Welcome back.

There's nothing particularly ominous about a runoff between candidates, but in the Congo it's between armies as well. President Kabila has a personal militia of about 15,000 men. Former Vice President Bemba has an army of his own as well. There was reportedly that exchange of fire between them near the electoral college on Sunday night and, as we've heard, gunfire in Kinshasa on Monday as well.

Joining us now to talk about what to expect is Ben Kalala, president of the Congolese Community Organization of Atlanta.

Thanks so much for being with us.

What do you make of the news about the firing in Kinshasa, the fact that these foreign diplomats seem to be trapped?

BEN KALALA, CONGOLESE COMMUNITY ORG. OF ATLANTA: Jonathan, thank you.

This is something that we've tried to avoid, and we knew that by going to the second round things would happen. What is happening right now is actually less than what would have happened if Kabila would have won these elections in the first round.

So, we heard about it, and they went to rescue, and I recently -- I just talked to Bemba's chief of staff, who was right there. He said, "I can't talk much right now. We are at President Bemba's house. The president is being attacked by Kabila's militia," and he had to run away from the phone.

I asked him where the president was, and I'm talking about Jean-Pierre Bemba, if he was close to him, so I could speak to him, and he said, "I can't even get close, because he had guests in the house, international guests in the house, so they're all trapped inside, and we're just here and it's not very safe."

MANN: This campaign, though, was regarded as surprisingly calm. Was there any expectation that it was going to turn out like this?

KALALA: Yes, this is something that could have been prevented, first of all, during the pre-election season, where (UNINTELLIGIBLE) leader of the opposition, the oldest opposition in the Congo, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Before the election, June 30, I was in Kinshasa. All the parties, the political parties in Kinshasa, they had requested that there be talks, talks with the international community, with the CAE, the independent electoral commission, so that before the elections take place they put all these things together in place to avoid any kind of misinformation, any kind of confrontation, after the election.

So, this could have been prevented before that. But, also --

MANN: It's not just the gunfire in the capital. The election result also speaks to a kind of cleavage between east and west in the country. How serious is that?

KALALA: This is very serious but, you know, we really don't want the international community, the public, to think that the Congo is being divided between east and west. This is just manipulation.

Kabila -- I was in Kinshasa. Kabila has no great support in the west part of the Congo, and even in the east, if they're saying today that Kabila has more than 80 percent of the votes in the east, speaking to people who come from the east part of the Congo, they're denying this. They're saying -- they've talked to their own families. They say we've talked to our people and what they're saying, that Kabila got 80 percent, is not true. But we cannot prove it.

MANN: Well, let me jump in on that very question, because Mr. Bemba has been quoted as saying that his fighters will start fighting if indeed the election turns out to have been rigged. What is the chance that whoever it is who is defeated will refuse to accept the results? After all, there were 33 candidates, only one of them is going to end up winning; 32 might be wondering whether they've been robbed.

KALALA: Well, Jonathan, there were a lot of irregularities noted in the Congo, besides Jean-Pierre Bemba, that made that comment, there was also 19 presidential candidates that did say the same thing. So --

MANN: For the record, though, international observers said that though the election didn't go particularly well, it didn't go particularly badly. It was the kind of election you might expect in a country that was doing its best with very, very little experience over the last 40 years.

KALALA: That is true. I am actually proud that the Congolese people showed the maturity to go to the election and vote. We were expecting in a worse case scenario that people would boycott the elections, like they did for the referendum in December last year. But Congolese people stood up, calm, and went to vote. And I was in Kinshasa, again, and I saw that. People voted and they came back home. This is something that people abroad, the international community, don't expect, which justifies the presence in the Congo of foreign military.

MANN: Now they're going to have to accept the result. Do you think they're going to, when the runoff is held and a count is final?

KALALA: We are accepting these results, even though we may ask it to be proven that -- prove to us where President Kabila got this 44 percent. But we as Congolese, we are pleased. Any Congolese that I talk to back home and even here, we are pleased that the country, we are going to the second round, and the best will win in the second round. Should that be the case, we're OK with it.

MANN: Ben Kalala, of the Congolese Community Organization of Atlanta, thanks so much for talking with us.

KALALA: Thank you very much, Jonathan.

MANN: We have to take another break. When we come back, looking beyond the vote in a country that is nearly collapsed.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The war and corruption in Congo may seem a long way off, but they're as near as your cell phone. Congo's territory contains almost three quarters of the world's supply of coltan, a rare metal ore used in cell phone batteries. The armies that invaded Congo made millions from the companies that mined and sold the coltan that you may be using.

Welcome back.

There's no simple way to help explain why the Democratic Republic of Congo is in such a mess, but one of the major reasons: too many soldiers making too much money from too many natural resources. Even the country's own army is a threat to its people. In a place like that, does an election even matter?

Joining us now to talk about that is Edward Joseph, program manager for central Africa for the organization formerly known as the International Foundation for Election Systems, now simply known as IFES.

So on a day like today, are you looking at what's happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a breakthrough or, given that there's been more violence to add to all of Congo's other trials, is it just another depressing day when things didn't quite go right?

EDWARD JOSEPH, IFES: Well, Jonathan, on the one hand, we have to be very concerned. Our own staff are there, present in Kinshasa, pinned down in their quarters by some of the shooting that your correspondent spoke about.

At the same time, we should put this in context. There is a viable peace process here. These elections are a critical part of it. Over 70 percent, one of the things that was not brought out in the results -- the focus has been on the results -- but over 70 percent of the population turned out. That is about 17 million people who voted, and voted very clearly for, no matter who they voted for, for peace.

So we should really try to keep this in context. It is serious. It's a very serious situation. There is obvious potential for escalation. But the focus has to be on the larger parameters of keeping a viable peace process going in a country in which about 3.5 million people have been casualties.

MANN: Let me ask you then not about politics but about government, the business of actually trying to help the people of the Congo, trying to bring even humane standards of living to those people. I guess it's something like 70 percent of the people live on 30-cents or less a day. Where does a government, where does a state like that even begin after decades of neglect?

JOSEPH: Well, Jonathan, where we have to begin is with the peace process. I come back to that. The election is an important part. It's not the end, but it is an important, critical part. You have to remember that the conflict in part is over those very resources that you talk about, and what has succeeded since 2003 is a viable process to at least bring in these warring factions, into an interim government and now hold elections. Elections have winners and losers as well, and there are people who are still outside the process.

So the focus has to be first on calming this immediate situation, getting these two contenders to buy in to a legitimate and calm second round of elections, and then bring in some of the others who are not part of that process. Hopefully the two competitors will exercise some of their energy reaching out to some of those who didn't win. That, then, in turn, lays the groundwork for the institutions and the long, hard work, and it will be quite difficult to establish governing institutions in this country and to address the corruption problem that you mentioned.

MANN: Are those two hand in hand? You talk about some kind of reconciliation between the warring factions and the problem of corruption. Some people say that the corruption is the result of reconciliation, that the rebel leaders, instead of being punished for war crimes or for corruption or from the theft of natural resources, were invited in as the country's four vice presidents. One of them may be the next president. Has Congo seen a way to solve its problems by institutionalizing corruption and absolving people of war crimes?

JOSEPH: Well, Jonathan, in the end, the problems of Congo have to be resolved by the parties themselves. The issues we're raising about the corruption are tremendously serious, and if there is anything that is true about Congo, if one word describes the history of the country, its exploitation, particularly of the mineral resources, and one of the efforts has to be the international community, has to be to get responsive institutions developed.

One aspect of this process is not only elections but the referendum that was mentioned by your correspondent, a referendum that passed a new constitution that will devolve power down to the provinces, that is where some of those mineral resources come from, a lot of that revenue is meant to stay there. That's a process called decentralization, and that's critical towards addressing the corruption issue.

But there are other aspects of it. Justice, you mentioned, is a critical component. Administration, just for example changing the means of paying bureaucrats, instead of paying them through their ministries, where a lot of the salaries are siphoned off, for example having them paid directly by the treasury. These are some of the reforms that can take place, but they can only take place after elections have been held and after a new government is established.

MANN: How much does the outside world have to intervene to help the Congo? Its own neighbors really want to exploit it. Its own citizens tend to be victims of the militias, tend to be victims of their own armed forces. The world essentially watched more or less, the Western world, as 4 million Congolese died of disease and starvation in the course of the wars there. Is it time now for the world to do even more than it's already doing, spending a billion dollars a year, it's got this enormous U.N. peacekeeping force, but is it going to need even more if Congo goes from being a basket case to a functioning country?

JOSEPH: It definitely will require at a minimum sustained engagement of a kind that Ambassador Swing talked about. And, Jonathan, you're absolutely right. It wasn't for nothing that Congo was called Africa's world war. And what we've seen is with the engagement of the international community, and an international community that, interestingly, doesn't just include the usual players, the United States and major European Union allies, but includes South Africa. We've seen a dramatic shift where there is pressure now on all parties, including those inside Congo and neighbors who might otherwise have other agendas, to at least permit this process to go forward.

So, there's no question now that sustained international engagement is critical. We see right now, with this violence, the critical importance of having a peacekeeping force there, this United Nations peacekeeping force there. You can imagine what the situation would be like if we did not have 17,000 peacekeepers on the ground.

MANN: Edward Joseph, of IFES, thanks so much for talking with us.

JOSEPH: Thank you.

MANN: That's INSIGHT. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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