Local elections: The IEC launches its information and sensitisation campaign

Kinshasa, 7 May 2009 - The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) launched this Thursday the national sensitization and information campaign on the revision of the electoral register for the provinces of Kinshasa and Bas Congo. The process of updating the electoral register will begin on 7 June next.

According to Crispin Kankonde, the 3rd vice-president of the IEC who officially launched this campaign, the revision of the electoral register, which aims at updating the electoral register drawn up after the identification and register of voters in 2005, will be carried out in two operational areas: from 7 June to 3 August 2009 in Bas Congo and Kinshasa; and from 2 August to 30 September 2009 in the nine other provinces of the country. 

Those implicated in the new operation include: new voters in 2009 (those born in 1991); voters of voting age that were not registered during 2005 and 2006; people who changed address; displaced people and retuned refugees in their electoral constituency; people who need to be erased from the electoral register because of death and for other legal reasons; registered voters that were omitted on the register; any citizen who recovered the right to vote; people concerned with the correction of material errors; potential voters for the general elections of 2011 (those born in 1993); demobilized former soldiers and police officers as well as the holders of a voter registration card with registration errors. 

To facilitate the sensitization programme, the IEC, in collaboration with the MONUC’s Electoral Division and the UNDP’s “Support Programme to the Electoral Cycle,” produced some communication documents in French and the four national languages (Swahili, Lingala, Kikongo and Tshiluba). 

The documents contain questions and the answers on the revision of the electoral register; folders which explain the procedures of the operation; posters which indicate the categories of people implicated in the revision of the electoral register and information posters that specifically sensitize women on the registration process. 

Samples of these various information documents were symbolically given to the IEC’s partners, representatives of religious groups, non-state actors and women’s organisations. 

All these partners reiterated their engagement to help the IEC in this information and public awareness campaign, by reaching out to the population in general and in particular to young girls in school, young boys and women. 

The director of MONUC’s Electoral division Carlos Valenzuela pointed out the importance of the campaign, which he said was “a strategic and fundamental part” of the first phase of the revision of the electoral register, which will determine the credibility and future success of the electoral process. 

He reassured those present of the support of MONUC, the UN Development Programme and of the international community to the IEC in the achievement of its mission. 

Mr.Valenzuela invited all the non-state actors to work with “enthusiasm and perseverance” for the success of the campaign.