Voting extends into 2nd day in Congo (AP)

KINSHASA, Congo ? Voting in Congo was extended into Tuesday after the first day of elections was marred by the late delivery of voting materials, errors on the ballot papers and by pockets of violence.

Country experts had urged the government to postpone Monday's presidential and legislative election, arguing that a delayed election was better than a botched one. Congo is in a race against the clock, though, because the five-year term of President Joseph Kabila expires next week, and the country could face unrest if he is seen as staying past his constitutional mandate.

Anger began to boil over in opposition strongholds in the capital where voters waited since dawn for ballots to be delivered.

The spokesman of the election commission, Matthieu Mpita, announced late Monday that the election would be extended into a second day.

"Voters at polling stations that never received ballots and which have not yet opened should await the delivery of the materials," he said. "Voters that are at sites where ballots ran out and where the vote had to be interrupted for whatever reason are asked to stay calm and await further instructions."

Pockets of violence were reported throughout the country. Five people were killed in the southeastern town of Lubumbashi on Monday after gunmen opened fire on a truck carrying ballots and on a polling center.

The head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, Roger Meece, told reporters that he had received reports of at least two polling stations being set on fire in the Kananga province.

In the capital, Kinshasa, poll workers ran out of the school where they were counting ballots late Monday after police fired tear gas to disperse the angry voters outside. The precinct had run out of ballots and had called for more to be delivered, said the president of one of the polling stations inside the school, Jean-Felix Dikamba.

The ballots were delivered in an unmarked car and when the poll workers tried to unload the material, a mob rushed the car, accusing the poll workers of delivering pre-marked ballots.

The dirt street outside the school was littered with shredded ballots, torn up by angry voters who were eventually dispersed by police lobbing tear gas.

Congo's territory straddles an area the size of the United States east of the Mississippi ? over 1.4 million square miles, much of it covered by rain forest. The vast forest in the country's east is still inhabited by militias and rebel groups responsible for period attacks on villages and the systematic rape of local women.

The vote is the second since the end of Congo's last war and the first to be organized by the government instead of the international community. The election was supposed to mark another step toward peace, but if the results are not accepted by the population, especially the country's fractured opposition, analysts fear it could drag Congo back into conflict.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111129/ap_on_re_af/af_congo_election

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