DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Voting begins in Congo elections

Congolese began voting on Sunday (July 30) in national elections designed to end years of war and chaos in the heart of Africa and that were protected by the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force. From the crumbling riverside capital Kinshasa through to the thick jungles of the Congo river basin and the mist-shrouded peaks of the east, Democratic Republic of Congo was holding its first democratic polls in more than 40 years. Polling stations opened first in the east of the vast former Belgian colony in central Africa because of a one-hour time difference with the west where Kinshasa is situated. Normally sleepy eastern towns were bustling as voters lined up outside polling stations, many guarded by U.N. personnel. "Our country has suffered for a long time. Today, we are voting, we are very happy because the power has come back to the people. That's why we are happy," said Elvis Bahati, as he waited to vote in the eastern centre of Goma. Schools, churches and tents have been transformed into 50,000 polling stations for more than 25 million voters. More than 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers -- backed by 1,000 European soldiers recently dispatched to the country -- have been deployed to try to ensure voting can take place across a country that is the size of Western Europe. Those voting in Congo's lawless east did so amid fears of attack by rebels while complaints over irregularities and an opposition boycott have already raised the spectre of violence and a rejection of the results. The presidential and parliamentary polls are the culmination of a three-year peace process which ended Congo's last war -- a 1998-2003 conflict that sucked in six neighbouring countries and killed 4 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

ITN Source | July 30, 2006

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