DRC elections on track
David Masango
5 July 2006
Elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo remained on course for July 30, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad told reporters at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Pahad said although there were still many "major" logistical problems in the DRC, he hoped that with the assistance of the United Nations (UN) these problems would be overcome.
He said the deployment of a South African 128-member observer team would take place from 19 July to 15 August to cover the campaigning period and voting, while some members would remain to cover the vote counting phase.
Pahad said the team would be deployed at 24 centres instead of the originally-planned 64 in all of the DRC's 11 provinces.
'Going well'
"The secretariat of our observer team will go to Kinshasa on the 14th and 15th [July] so that they can be in place before the observer team arrives there.
"All other arrangements, whether it's
medical, emergency - plans are in hand and we are happy that it’s going well. All the observers will go through a workshop training programme in the next few days," he explained.
Pahad said all ballot papers had been delivered to the DRC with the exception of four constituencies in Kinshasa but those would be shipped out by this week.
Private sector assistance
He said the South African business sector had provided information technology (IT) expertise, which South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) did not have.
"We appealed to the business sector for assistance and companies have provided the services of 64 IT specialists.
"Clearly the private sector has come on board in helping us provide the IT specialists we need for the elections. In general we think there are no big problems in the DRC," said Pahad.
The companies that offered assistance include Telkom, Dell, Vodacom, Sentech, Didata, IBM, Cell-C and
Sahara.
UN mission
Pahad indicated that the DRC elections were the largest and the most expensive assistance operation the UN had ever undertaken.
Monuc, the UN Mission in DRC, has 18 000 uniformed personnel in the DRC, mainly for peace-keeping purposes.
"Monuc, at the official start of the election campaign period again called for all parties to ensure a calm, serene and constructive atmosphere, along with free and fair media access to voting facilities", said Pahad.
"It also called on the Congolese politicians and political parties to refrain from hate messages, adding that this unique moment should be one of national unity and not of national division."
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