General matters

I want to speak briefly about two things: first, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, secondly, IPSA—a subject into which I will segue with surprisingly little effort; as you will discover, Mr Deputy Speaker, there is a significant link between the two. Today, the incumbent President, Joseph Kabila, was invested in office again after an election that was preposterous. It was condemned strongly by the United States and France—and by Belgium; one might not normally think that terribly important, but in the case of the Congo, the Belgians' position is quite important. Europe looks to Belgium to give a moral lead in some historical respect. The Carter Center observed the elections and said that they were not valid. The Open Society Institute did the same. In general, the position of most Governments, including the UK Government, is that the elections were a farce. Nevertheless, Joseph Kabila turns out to be still in power. It is one of those odd situations where it is hard to break off diplomatic relations with a country because it has flawed elections. Many countries do not have elections at all, but the Congo is one of those worrying cases where things are going backwards. It had pretty well organised, well run elections funded by the international community back in 2006. This time, early in the year, President Kabila changed the rules to take out the second round of elections because he did not think he would win in the second round. He thought he would win easily in the first round. As the campaigning moved on, it looked as though he might lose in the first round so it looks awfully like some manipulation took place, although nobody could see it. The manipulation occurs in the places where the ballot boxes are tipped out—sometimes just tipped out all over the floor and sometimes actually counted. Some remarkable results emerged. In Katanga, where President Kabila clearly has a fantastic campaigning machine, he managed to get 99.8% of the vote—remarkable. His getting the vote out and his ID work must have been truly magnificent—99.8% of the vote. Only more remarkable than that is the fact that the turnout in Katanga, his own stronghold, was 100.14%—astonishing success in the Congo. Perhaps we should be watching how those politicians campaign and what the campaigning methods are. On the other hand, perhaps not.