Focus Media (Kigali)
Ann Christine Ishimwe
3 March 2008
The League for Human Rights in the Great Lakes Region (LDGL) recently conducted a one day seminar for its member from Rwanda, Burundi and Congo to exchange experiences on elections and election monitoring.
Pascal Nyiribakwe, the executive secretary of ldgl, said that the goal of this meeting was to put in place proper strategies that will help in fair monitoring of elections in the Great Lakes region as well as to come up with solutions for the consolidation of a democratic culture within this region.
Speaking on the role that the civil society played in the monitoring of elections in Burundi, Dieudoné Mutana, executive director of cosome (Coalition of the civil society for the monitoring of election) said that they followed with interest and vigilance all the phases of the electoral process in Burundi.
He further explained that during that election phase, cosome dispatched its observers in 30% of the poling stations. This was done in order for them to follow the election process and to see to it that there were no irregularities in the process.
During the post election stage said Dieudoné Mutana, they organized several days during which the reports of the election processes were presented in order to make national and international communities aware of what was taking place.
During this seminar it was observed that the media in Burundi had played an important role in covering the elections and in informing the public in real time of the process. Dieudoné Mutana said that cosome is now preparing for the elections which will take place in 2010.
For his part, the president of ldgl, Chiko Sanane spoke of the difficult political and security situation in which the 2006 elections took place in Congo. He observed that principal objective of the elections was to solve the question of the legitimacy of those in power.
Sanane however pointed out that certain members of the civil society betrayed their mandate and made a pact with the people in power.
According to the ldgl president, this eventually led to many irregularities in the electoral process, especially corruption. He advocated for all members of the civil society in drc to draw lessons form the past election and be better prepared to properly monitor the next ones.
Gender sensitive
Concerning the role the civil society in Rwanda, Jean Claude Ngendandumwe observed that poer (program for the observation of elections in Rwanda) played an active role in monitoring the 2003 elections.
The major constraints that poer faced, he said, were a lack of financing and the effective management of the 600 observing agents who were present within the country.
He did not agree with those who said that poer was not critical enough and did not mention certain irregularities during the 2003 election, arguing that one has to take into account the particular context of Rwanda.
Participants at the seminar remarked that poer needed to be more gender sensitive so that women at all levels are well aware of the role they need to play during elections. They also noted that poer had to be better prepared so that it could more efficiently monitor the next elections.
Overall, participants recommended that a regional structure for election monitoring in the Great Lakes region should be established. It was also recommended that the capacity of the civil society should be reinforced to allow it to fully play its monitoring role during elections.
Participants further agreed that freedom of speech was to be encouraged.
Also, it was recommended that poer learns from cosome's experiences, and that the latter should be invited to take part in the monitoring of the parliamentary elections in Rwanda in September.
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