THE voters of Mashiau had all but given up hope, fearing that their leaders had lied again.

With two days to go until polling day in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s first multiparty election, ballot papers and boxes had still not arrived at the run-down village a few hours’ drive from Kinshasa. “People were beginning to think we would miss out,” said Lemba-a-Nayumbu, a local official working for the Independent Electoral Commission. “Everybody here who can, has registered to vote.”

Early yesterday a United Nations vehicle with two policemen on board finally arrived in the village. The Times accompanied the electoral consignment, which included collapsible polling booths, as it was carried on people’s heads to a mud-walled school serving as one of more than 46,000 polling stations.

A small crowd of people dressed in rags gathered outside, chatting excitedly and watching with evident surprise as ballot sheets the size of posters were unloaded. “It is the first time I have been able to vote. I really did not think it would happen. Now, I cannot wait,” said Guy, 20, who wants to be a mechanic but has never worked.

The delivery had been delayed by a riot in the capital — just the latest hiccup in a huge UN-organised operation.

Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, has just 300 miles of paved roads. Many villages lie deep in the world’s second-largest rainforest. The people rank among the poorest in Africa, as many as 1,200 people dying every day from easily preventable diseases.

The UN has 17,500 troops in the country to help with the elections. European Union countries have sent 1,000, with a back-up force of a further 1,200, as an “insurance policy”.

Most villages — some at the end of donkey-rutted mud tracks, others accessible only by dug-out canoe — received the election material on schedule two days ago. Each village has nominated someone to look after them and the UN has paid for two policemen to accompany him or her at all times.

Tomorrow’s vote follows the agreement that ended Congo’s 1998-2003 civil war. That conflict drew in armies from six neighbouring states and killed some four million people, making it the world’s most costly conflict since the Second World War.

Many of the country’s 25.6 million voters believe that the election can bring a new-style of government to a country that has known only rapacious colonialism, brutal dictatorship, civil war and suffering.

Such optimism could be misplaced. When one of the main candidates, the former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, arrived in Kinshasa on Thursday, violence soon broke out. At least two policemen and two civilians were killed in scuffles with his supporters.

President Kabila, the front-runner, is battling to win the election in the first round but, with 32 other hopefuls in the race, he faces an uphill struggle to do so.

VOTE BY NUMBERS

33 presidential candidates
9,707 parliamentary candidates
25.6 million voters
$470m cost of elections
46 years since the last democratic election
4 million dead in conflict since 1998
56 million population
210 languages
2.34 million sq km area, the size of Western Europe
4 killed in pre-election clashes Thursday
17,500 UN peacekeepers, annual budget $1bn

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