Another 48 Hours...

North Kivu, January, 2010

...Until the results will be released. 
Or so they say.
So we continue to wait.


In the meantime, Pray for:

Calm and peace in Beni after shootings yesterday morning. They were (likely) not election-related. But it initially caused a lot of alarm among the population during the early hours of the morning. 
(Roughly) translated into English from Radio Okapi Beni: 3 dead and 3 injured in clashes between FARDC and ADF-Nalu, the article is posted here in case you do not have a translation program in your browser:

Three people were killed and three others injured Tuesday, December 6 this morning at Beni in North Kivu, in the clashes between the FARDC and the Mai-Mai militia Ruwenzori associated with Ugandan rebels of the ADF-NALU. Calm has returned to this city and military authorities assured that the situation was under control. 

Two attackers were killed and another wounded, said Colonel Ngeleka Celestin, the spokesperson of "Operation Safisha Ruwenzori," responsible for the disarmament of the rebels of the ADF-NALU. Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) had two injuries in their ranks, the source said. 

An independent source confirmed that an officer of the Directorate of Revenue of North Kivu (DGNRK) was also killed and another National Fund for road maintenance (Foner), seriously injured in Mabolio area south-west Beni. 

It is in this area that the Ugandan rebels of the ADF-NALU and the Mai-Mai Rwenzori launched early this Tuesday, December 6, their assault on FARDC positions in the city. According to Colonel Ngeleka Celestin, the attackers have besieged the areawhere is the Beni central prison. " They wanted to attack the State Police Headquarters and the dungeon of the military prosecutor's office to release all prisoners , "he said. 
Beni was like a ghost town after the clashes, witnesses said. 

The mayor of Beni, Masumuko Bwanakawa called the local population for calm and go about her normal activities. 

Since last Friday, Beni was already under heavy military guard. Sunday, December 4th, the army was on high alert following the leaflets dropped in the city announcing an imminent attack by the rebels of the ADF-NALU.

Pray for the entire country, as we found out late last night that the results will not be posted until Thursday.

DR Congo election results delayed by 48 hours - BBC News 

Congo's delayed election results raise fears of a return to war - The Guardian

     This article focuses mainly on what's going on in the capital, Kinshasa.  

ICC watching DRC vote - Independent Online

Democratic Republic of Congo: Failed but hopeful - Huffington Post

Beyond Elections in the Congo - Canadian International Council 

With tensions high, people are still hoping for a peaceful reception of the results. Since there are lots of soldiers stationed throughout the cities and country-side, it's hard to know how or if that will even be possible. 

Congolese men and women in other cities around the world have been demonstrating against corruption, rigging and fraudulent vote results in the DR Congo. Unfortunately, some of these protests have turned violent.

DR Congo protesters clash with police in London - AFP 

DR Congo protests flare in Canada - AFP

As a dear friend in Beni told me, the biggest concern is for Kinshasa and what will happen there... Whenever the results are announced. So pray for Kinshasa and the citizens there. 



Pray for the people of the DR Congo; pray for peace, freedom, safety, justice, and the future of this country. 

Waiting for election results.

At 9am in Kampala, Uganda... We're waiting to hear the announcement of the results in the DRC.
The CENI website (http://www.cei-rdc.cd/) is not loading... Maybe it's down with too many visitors?

Some friends in Congo yesterday told us that text messaging services had been suspended within the country. People can send international text messages, but not inside of the country. I believe they can receive messages from international numbers as well.

Additionally, some cities had curfews yesterday and maybe even on Sunday night.

There are lots of soldiers in North Kivu... People are anxiously waiting for the results to be announced, supposedly that will happen today.

So for now, we are waiting.

A few more articles that I've found which you may want to read, especially this op-ed piece on the Guardian by Jason Stearns, which is quoted in part below. Click the link (or here) to read the full article.
"The verdict of Congo's voters must not be sacrificed for 'stability'"
Foreign powers who choose to look the other way as polls are rigged will hardly make the country more stable

Tens of millions of Congolese went to the polls last Monday. It was an emotional day: women with infants strapped to their back waited for hours in the sun, while elsewhere old men hobbled through knee-deep water to cast their ballots. And yet, as the country heads towards a post-election crisis, western diplomats seem ready to see the voters' verdict sacrificed for a misguided notion of stability. 

These elections, the second since the end of a bloody civil war, have been mired in controversy for the past year. In January, President Joseph Kabila's party orchestrated a change in the constitution, getting rid of a runoff round of polls for the presidency. This effectively pitted opposition candidates against each other, improving Kabila's chances. The election law was also changed, allowing the ruling coalition to appoint the head of the election commission. Nonetheless, the incumbent has faced stiff competition, especially from firebrand opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who has been able to attract crowds of over 100,000 people. There has been no reliable polling, but preliminary results from voting stations suggest that the race is tight, meaning even minor rigging could be a game-changer.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered from violence for the past 15 years, often due to unaccountable leadership. Looking the other way as polls are rigged will hardly make the country more stable. 

And other recent articles to read: 

Congolese crisis - The Nation 

DRC: Ceni publishes the fourth partial results of the presidential election - Radio Okapi - In French (but you can translate the page using translate.google.com). This says that Kabila is winning in both North and South Kivus by a large margin... Seems unlikely. 

DR Congo's Kabila leads top rival day before final result - AFP 

Clashes erupt in Congo ahead of vote results - Reuters 

How wars and poverty have saved DR Congo's forests - BBC - But this is election time, not time to talk about the rain forest!  

Congo election: Joseph Kabila leads in early results - The Guardian  

DR Congo 'to use army in event of poll chaos' - Al Jazeera News, video on YouTube 

I'll post again when we know the results, if they will even be published or announced today. 
Continuing to pray,
Bethany 

"In DR Congo, Kabila finally comes of age"

More articles and updates for you....

But first, my favorite one so far! I just had to post this one:

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000047793&cid=349
In DR Congo, Kabila finally comes of age - The Standard (Kenya)
By Peter Wanyonyi

It is not for nothing that African presidents are described as ‘big’ men. Few elective positions in the world confer upon an individual the kind of power, prestige and money that an African gets by becoming leader of his or her country.

Whisper this quietly, too, but since African leaders are always men, save for those confused Liberians, being president also provides unfettered access to fellow citizens of the fairer gender.

In the pantheon of Africa’s Big Men, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Joseph Kabila has largely been a benign, reluctant presence. Unlike many of his peers, he didn’t come to power via a coup, a bush war or rigged elections. He inherited his position when a trusted bodyguard summarily dispatched his father to the other world. 

He was a slow learner, President Joseph Kabila. But no one can blame him. After all, he wasn’t even married when he became president of the DRC and as every villager knows, precious little can be expected of a man without a woman in the house. But as soon as a woman steps into a man’s world, matters change rapidly for the better. Focus is acquired, ambitions to own things suddenly materialise, and a ruthless pursuit of happiness ensues, driven by the needs of the real boss — Madam. 

Mad men

And so it is that President Kabila is finally coming of age. Pressed into agreeing to an allegedly democratic vote by his budget support partners, President Kabila finally acceded to elections, which are currently ongoing.

But the DRC is a strange place. Even mad men will wonder why a country that is wealthier than any other on earth — at least in terms of natural resources — should need budgetary support. After all, what is so difficult about digging holes in the ground, hauling minerals out of them and spreading them on the market. 

To be fair, though, President Kabila was willing to go along with the faÁade of democratic elections until someone — some say from South East Asia with an eye on the minerals of the DRC — whispered things into the Presidential ear. 

Whereupon the opposition candidate, who looked like he was making a fair shake of grabbing actual votes, discovered to his surprise that he wasn’t really supposed to campaign that hard, because there is no way he could win even if he did garner the most votes. 

You remember Uganda’s Dr Kiiza Besigye, don’t you?

And for a few more links... 

Church leaders warn of pending violence in Democratic Republic of Congo - The Telegraph
Editorial - The Times (South Africa)
Congo’s election commission says President Joseph Kabila leads in early vote results
*Note: I'm not sure where some of the sources for this information came from... But I don't agree with all of it... Especially the "reasons" for the delays in voting... Porters carrying the ballots on their heads? What about all of those planes we read about (how many were there?), which were rented to deliver ballots all over the country? 
Congo opposition rejects early presidential vote results - Reuters
Congo Siasa - Jason Stearns' blog

Bad aid?

For some time now, I've really questioned the effectiveness and impact of Fair Trade claims or companies like TOMS Shoes. It seems unlikely that the companies offer or do as much as they promise, to the people they claim to help with our over-priced purchases. 
Here is an article that I came across recently, addressing this very issue (thanks Chelsie!). Click on the link to read the entire article. 

A tryst with TOMS

By Vivek Nemana | Published November 12, 2010

We buy TOMS Shoes or Fair Trade chocolate or poverty-fighting water bottles because we genuinely want to help. But in the frenzy of do-gooder consumption we stop thinking all the way through. We fail to ask how our money will help, and we overlook how our good deeds might actually do harm. We forget that what we want to do for others might not be the same as what they really need.

http://aidwatchers.com/2010/11/a-tryst-with-toms/