Congo fire torches thousands of voting machines ahead of election

A fire overnight at a warehouse in Congo's capital destroyed thousands of voting machines and ballot boxes that were due to be used in the country'slong-delayed Dec. 23 presidential election, authorities said on Thursday.

The national electoral commission of Congo, also known as Congo-Kinshasa, said in a statement the blaze had destroyed 8,000 of 10,368 voting machines due to be used in the capital, but said the election would go ahead as scheduled.

The commission did not say who it believed to be responsible for the fire which broke out about 2 a.m. local time in the Gombe riverside area of Kinshasa that is also home to President Joseph Kabila's residence but the ruling coalition and leading opposition candidates immediately traded accusations of blame.

Kabila's Common Front for Congo (FCC), which is backing former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary in the presidential race, accused opposition candidate Martin Fayulu of inciting violence earlier this month.

"Over the course of this electoral campaign, [Fayulu]called on his supporters and sympathizers to destroy electoral materials," the FCC said in a statement.

Fayulu rejected the charge and suggested that state security forces might have been behind the blaze.

"The fire erupted in a building guarded by the Republican Guard," Fayulu told Reuters. "You understand today that the Kabila people do not want to organize elections."

Felix Tshisekedi, the other leading opposition candidate, also suggested on local radio that the government was responsible. "How is it that what should be the best protected place in the republic at this time can burn so easily?" he said.

UNdeputy spokespersonFarhan Haq said firefighters from the UNpeacekeeping mission in Congo helped put out the blaze.

Barnabe Kikaya, a Kabila adviser, said police guarding the warehouse had been arrested and that forensic police had launched an investigation.

"The enemies of democracy have stepped it up a gear," Kikaya said.

Kabila, in power since his father's assassination in 2001, is due to step down because of constitutional term limits.

Vote already delayed by 2 years

Congo's presidential election has already been pushed back by two years due to what authorities said were logistical challenges. Opposition parties have argued the delays were caused by obstacles put in place because ofKabila's reluctance to relinquish power.

This month's highly anticipated vote could mark Congo's first peaceful transition of power since independence in 1960, after decades marked by authoritarian rule, assassinations and civil wars in which millions of people are thought to have died.

Corneille Nangaa, the president of the electoral commission,told a news conference the destroyed equipment represented the materials for 19 of 24 voting districts in Kinshasa.

"Without minimizing the gravity of this damaging situation for the electoral process, [the commission] is working to pursue the process in conformity with its calendar," Nangaa said.

Kikaya said voting machines from elsewhere in Congo an infrastructure-starved country of 40 million voterswould be recalled for use in Kinshasa, which is home to more than 15 per cent of the population.

Untested machines sow controversy

The introduction of the untested tablet-like voting machines for the election has been widely opposed by opposition candidates competing against Shadary.

They say the machines are more vulnerable to vote-rigging than paper and ink, and could be compromised by the unreliability of Congo's power supply.

The delay in the elections over the past two years has coincided with a breakdown in security across much of the vast mineral-rich country.

Campaigning over the past three weeks has been mostly peaceful, but police fired live rounds to disperse opposition supporters this week in the country's southeast, killing at least one person on Wednesday.

Another person was killed on Thursday by security forces in the central city of Mbuji-Mayi ahead of a campaign visit by Tshisekedi. Vincent Ngoy, a spokesperson for the provincial governor, told Reuters a "stray bullet" was to blame.