Candidates complete coalitions for Congo polls

With just days to go before campaigning begins, Democratic Republic of Congo’s cluttered line-up of presidential hopefuls have been finalizing coalitions for the first free elections in over 40 years.

Thirty-two people have signed up to challenge President Joseph Kabila in the July 30 polls, which are meant to draw a line under the vast central African country’s last war, a 1998-2003 conflict that killed four million people.

Former rebel commanders and opposition leaders from across the country have been joined in the race for Congo’s top job by sons and daughters of former presidents and a cancer doctor from the diaspora in the United States, amongst others.

Coaltions key
Just a handful of former rebels and opposition leaders are seen as serious challengers to Kabila, who remains the firm favorite to win a five-year term. But a second round run-off would allow the challengers to join forces to try to oust him.

In the sprawling nation, where no ethnic group represents more than five percent of the population, candidates must form coalitions to stand a chance in national polls, analysts say.

Jason Stearns, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said many parties had a narrow ethnic or regional base.

“So it is only logical that, in such a large country, where there are over 260 political parties, they have to form these coalitions,” he told Reuters.

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Kabila launches alliance
After eight hours of waiting at a rally to launch Kabila’s coalition, supporters were still thumping drums and chanting as his activists handed out stickers bearing the president’s face.

Once he swept onto the stage, the crowd listened patiently as the names of 31 political parties and 29 individuals were introduced as the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP).

“We have grouped men and women from the north and the south, the east and the west, without forgetting the center of this beautiful country,” Andre-Philippe Futa, coordinator of the AMP, told those at the coalition’s launch over the weekend.

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Kabila’s challengers have taken similar steps.

Former rebel leader and current vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba is from Equateur province and enjoys the backing of supporters of the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, but he has established the Rally of Congolese Nationalists (RENACO).

Former Central Bank governor Pierre Pay-Pay is from eastern Congo’s North Kivu province and has tried to broaden his base with his Coalition of Congolese Democrats (CODECO).

There is also a scramble for supporters of the popular UDPS opposition party, which is boycotting polls it says are flawed.

If no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will go through to a second round several months on.

“The coalitions will become even more important in the second round, when it will be easier to know how much each party is worth,” Stearns said.

Hopeful election will lead to a fresh start
The international community spends over $1 billion every year on the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in the Congo and has invested over $400 million in the electoral process in the hope the polls will offer the mineral-rich country a fresh start.

But some in Kinshasa, the run-down capital of the former Belgian colony and home to between eight and nine million people, are more skeptical.

An editorial in Le Potentiel, a daily newspaper, questioned the rush to set up coalitions. “Is it to dedicate themselves to the service of the people or simply, as is the case at the moment, to seek Eldorado to look after themselves?”