Congo election dispute: government fights back with its own stats

Guest blogger Jason Stearns writes that the Congolese government is starting to push back at criticism of election irregularities, saying President Kabila would have won anyway.

Faced with an onslaught of criticism from the European Union, Carter Center and the Catholic church, members of the Congolese government has informally released its own report on the elections, authored, I am told, by the former election commissioner Abb? Malu Malu. This is not an official argument - they are informally passing around these documents to diplomats and observers.

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In a well-written document, (with graphs here and here) these officials play along with allegations of fraud, but argue that even if there had been 3,449 polling stations (a different figure than that of the EU) uncounted, and that all those votes had gone to Tshisekedi, he would still be behind by 1.6 million votes.

They also argue that the suspiciously high turnout rates could be attributed to the large number of people who voted?par d?rogation, i.e. whose names were not on the original voting lists. However, if you look at turnout rates of over 99%, there are almost equal numbers of these polling stations in opposition and majority strongholds: 2,690 (pro-Kabila) and 4,320 (pro-Tshisekedi).

One can immediately begin to poke holes in these arguments ? for example, there were other forms of irregularities highlighted by observation missions other than just uncounted ballots and excessive turnout. Also, it is not clear how they define opposition and majority strongholds ? Kabila got a significant number of votes in the Kasais, for example. Maybe the polling stations with excessive turnout there voted for him?
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?In any case, the documents are worth reading and debating. They have also posted an interesting 1,042 page document with all of the polling station results ? check out pages 784 and onwards for a nice visual representation of irregularities in Katanga.
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?At the end of the day, however, the argument "even if there had been fraud, Kabila would have won" is something of a canard. Given the anger in the country, it is as much about the process as about the result. A substantial part of the population will not believe the government or anybody else that Kabila would have won a free and fair vote unless there is an investigation and some sort of recourse for fraud. It is indeed possible that Kabila would have won a clean election, but that kind of logic is falling on millions of deaf ears for the moment.

? Jason Stearns blogs about the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes region at Congo Siasa.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Ken7kAc8lms/Congo-election-dispute-government-fights-back-with-its-own-stats

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