EU "deplores" lack of opposition in vote for president

The European Union (EU) has stated that it "deplores the low level of participation by opposition parties throughout the [presidential] electoral process and the withdrawal of several candidates in the days preceding the poll" in the Republic of Congo (ROC). In a landslide victory, Denis Sassou-Nguesso was elected president of the ROC for the next seven years, having won over 89 percent of the vote in elections held on 10 March. This was the first time Sassou-Nguesso was elected to the presidency, an office he first seized in 1979 and held until 1992, and then seized again in 1997 until this month's elections. Former Prime Minister Andre Milongo, considered to be Sassou-Nguesso's main challenger, withdrew from the race on 8 March, claiming irregularities. He urged his supporters to boycott the elections, but cautioned against resorting to violence. None of the six challengers that remained in the race garnered more than 3 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, former President Pascal Lissouba, who defeated Sassou-Nguesso in the country's last presidential election, held in 1992, and former Prime Minister Bernard Kolelas, were barred from entering the race by the revised constitution, which requires candidates to have resided continuously in the country for at least two years before the election. Both are living abroad in exile, having been tried and convicted in absentia for crimes allegedly committed during the civil war that plagued the nation throughout the 1990s. In a statement released on Wednesday, the EU urged the Congolese government "to put corrective measures in place to ensure that the forthcoming parliamentary elections are better organised". It repeated its call to the government and opposition parties to intensify and maintain the national dialogue, and noted that it remained "ready to assist the Congolese authorities in activities aimed at strengthening the rule of law, respect for human rights and consolidation of the democratisation process in the country". The EU had an election observer mission in the ROC from 22 February to 15 March. On the basis of the conclusions of that mission, the EU said it "would draw the attention of the Congolese government to certain shortcomings it noted in the organisation and conduct of the presidential election, particularly the difficulty for the public to gain access to electoral texts, lack of control over changes to the electoral rolls, the late distribution of polling cards, the insufficiently clear division of tasks between the national electoral commission and the administration, and the limited access of some candidates to the national media". The EU statement also noted that the Central and Eastern European countries associated with the EU, the associated countries Cyprus, Malta and Turkey, and the EFTA countries, members of the European Economic Area, had aligned themselves with this declaration. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) was also critical of the election. "The government's refusal to establish an independent election body to oversee the voting certainly suggests that President Sassou-Nguesso was determined to stay in power by fair means or foul; at the same time, however, much of the population is prepared to accept this as the price of peace, deeming a massaged election result preferable to an internationally unrecognised government or, worse, a re-fragmentation of military power," the EIU said on 12 March. Despite its criticism, the EU said the election had "provided an opportunity for the Congolese people to express their desire for peace and their rejection of violence". It welcomed "the calm and commitment of the Congolese people", and noted that "the democratic process which has just begun, and which the EU hopes will deepen, constitutes an essential prerequisite for a lasting peace and for the development of the country in a context of political stability, guaranteeing the free exercise of civic rights and fundamental freedoms". Sassou-Nguesso, 59, first seized power in a 1979 military coup. Following his defeat to Lissouba in 1992, he again seized power in October 1997, in advance of elections in which he was due to oppose Lissouba. Sassou-Nguesso, in turn, faced a rebellion launched by militias loyal to Lissouba and Kolelas in 1998. Civil war displaced up to one-third of the ROC's 3.1 million residents and left some 10,000 dead. Cease-fire agreements were signed by all sides at the end of 1999. 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.