Hostilities, irregularities mar elections

Hostilities and irregularities marred the first round of legislative elections held on Sunday in the Republic of Congo, the government said.

"Overall, things did not go as smoothly as the Ministry of the Interior would have liked," a government on Monday, adding that in the nation's capital, Brazzaville, "a number of irregularities that could compromise the chances of this round of voting being validated were observed in several districts."

Fresh polling will take place in four constituencies in Brazzaville's northern suburb of Talangai, where angry voters, alleging fraud, ransacked polling stations and made off with ballot boxes on Sunday, AFP reported. There will also be a re-run in a constituency in Ouenze, another district in the north of Brazzaville, where people were unable to cast their votes because the logos of some candidates were missing from ballot papers.

In the port city of Pointe Noire and elsewhere, polling was delayed by organisational problems as people could not find their names on the voters' list or did not have a voter's card, Reuters reported. In the southern Pool region, where the government has been battling anti-government militias, voting was postponed in eight of 14 electoral districts.

The turbulence had a serious impact on voter turnout, with government estimates citing "no more than 20 percent" of the eligible electorate having voted. However, it did highlight the fact that 300 women were among the 1,200 total candidates competing for 137 seats in the national assembly.

Since 1998, the ROC has had a National Transitional Council consisting of 75 non-elected members. The council was created to replace the bicameral parliament existing prior to the 1997 civil war. The bicameral parliament chosen in this election will replace the council.

The International Foundation for Election Systems says there are 1.6 million registered voters of an estimated population of three million in the ROC. Results are due to announced on Tuesday. A second round of legislative elections is due to take place on 23 June, concurrent with local and municipal elections.

Fighting erupted in the ROC at the end of March, when so-called Ninja militias attacked several government military positions in Pool region, official sources said. Ninja representatives have countered that the clashes were provoked when they discovered government plans to arrest their leader, the Rev Frederic Bitsangou (alias Ntoumi). At least 45,000 people have been displaced by the clashes, according to the UN.

Campaigning for the first round of legislative elections was officially launched on 10 May, with Congolese Interior Minister Pierre Oba appealing for the sustained prevalence of the "calm and good conduct" that characterised the recent presidential elections, when Denis Sassou-Nguesso won a landslide victory in the ROC's first presidential poll since 1992.

The ROC, an oil-rich country bordering the much larger Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a former French colony that gained independence in 1960.