The Democratic Republic of Congo’s electoral commission is still waiting on about $230 million from the government as it rushes to prepare for general elections next month.

The financing delay will drive up costs as the commission now needs to charter helicopters and planes to get voting materials to remote locations before the Dec. 20 vote, the head of the electoral authority, Denis Kadima, said.

“And that is not budgeted; we must sacrifice something to accommodate that,” Kadima said in an interview at his office in Kinshasa, the capital, on Thursday. Congo’s Finance Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Congo is nearly the size of Western Europe with little infrastructure after decades of mismanagement and war. Twenty-five candidates are on the ballot to replace incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi.

More than 100,000 people are running for office — nearly double the number of candidates in the last election in 2018 — in part due to the country’s first local elections in decades. About 44 million Congolese have registered to vote, Kadima said.

A defective batch of voter identification cards on which the photos and information fade over time has further complicated preparations.

Some voters are heating their cards with irons or candles to make their information reappear, a practice that the commission is trying to stop because it can destroy the IDs, Kadima said.

Presidential candidate Theodore Ngoy told reporters on Thursday in Kinshasa, alongside leading candidates Martin Fayulu and Denis Mukwege, that 80% of voters have unreadable cards, though Kadima says the problem is “manageable” and the commission is offering to replace cards and provide an alternate verification process on voting day.

“It’s not a huge population, it’s not millions and millions, but we’ll deal with it,” Kadima said.

More than a million Congolese won’t be able to vote in the presidential election because of ongoing violence in three territories in the country, Kadima said.

In the eastern North Kivu province, a rebellion by a group known as M23 has prevented registration in two territories, while inter-communal fighting in western Mai-Ndombe province will delay elections there as well, Kadima said. The three territories will be able to eventually vote for parliamentary, provincial and local representatives, he said.

One of the electoral commission’s biggest struggles is combatting incumbent politicians around the country who previously won their seats through corruption, Kadima said.

“They know that if they go for elections, there’s no way they will win because people never voted them in in the first place,” Kadima said. “So their mindset is to cheat.”

(Updates with comment by Kadima in final two paragraphs)

Author: Michael J. Kavanagh