Congo Brazzaville - election

Polls open but voting slow

Article published on the 2009-07-12 Latest update 2009-07-12 15:28 TU

(Credit: Geoatlas)

Voting began shortly after seven in the morning but polls were slightly late to open in the capital Brazzaville. Election Monitor Roch Eulogo Nzobo said that he had visited two districts and that were "no voters" when they opened at eight this morning.

Just over two million of Congo-Brazzaville's 3.6 people are eligible to vote according to Congolese officials. Roger Bouka Owoko of the Congolese Observatory for Human Rights said this weekend that the electoral roll had been inflated and that "Congo cannot have so many electors".

He said the electoral roll should be closer to 1.6 million voters.

One election observer was quoted anonymously by the media as saying "there are more observers than voters".

The head of a polling station in the south of the capital, Gaston Nganga, said that two years ago there had been queues by nine in the morning for the legislative elections. "Today at the same time, we had only 12 people out of 375 registered who have voted", he said.

On Friday four of the twelve candidates standing against Sassou Nguesso called on for voters to boycott the election. The four included Mathias Dzon, a former finance minister.

The last presidential election was not deemed up to standard by international observers and the African Union criticised recent legislative (2007) and local (2008) elections as irregular and containing fraud.

On France 24 TV  Polls open in presidential election, amidst calls for boycott