Diamond in the Rough; Can the first free vote in 40 years help save the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Byline: Rod Nordland

Thirteen-year-old kamwala Bijicka wants to be a doctor when he grows up. But right now he's a school dropout digging for diamonds with the rest of his family, working by hand and hoping their pit doesn't collapse. On election day last week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his parents took a couple of hours off to vote for a president in the country's first free polls in four decades. Whoever wins, however, isn't likely to lift the Bijickas out of poverty.

The Congo has almost unparalleled mineral riches, including gold, uranium, the world's biggest industrial diamond deposits, and 80 percent of world reserves in a mineral called coltan, which is crucial to the manufacture of mobile telephones. Yet decades of vicious warfare, breathtaking corruption and public neglect have reduced its people to among the world's poorest. The Bijicka family will be lucky to make a dollar a day in their little mine, digging up tiny, low-quality diamonds; if they find a good-sized stone, says the mother, Marie, Kamwala and his brothers will be able to go back to school.

Hope is about all most Congolese have left, and they've invested much of it in the elections. Current President Joseph Kabila, son of former dictator Laurent Kabila, won the first round of voting with 45 percent of the vote, compared with 20 percent for his opponent, a warlord named Jean Pierre Bemba who has been vice president in the interim national-unity government. The runoff between the two men was concluded on Oct. 29. The results aren't in and probably won't be until later this week. But thousands of international observers who fanned out throughout the country generally found the elections free and fair, despite scattered problems. What remains to be seen is if the loser will accept the results.

If history is any guide, the answer may be no. The first round of voting was marred by violence that left 31 people dead in the capital. The presidential guard, with tanks and heavy weaponry, squared off against Bemba loyalists after first-round results were announced. Bemba's personal doctor was killed, allegedly by Kabila supporters. During a protest, Bemba supporters overran the High Media Authority, which tries to rein in inflammatory campaign press on both sides. They gang-raped one of its female employees, set two policemen on fire and burned the place down.

In the runoff, turnout was much lighter than the first round, which is likely to favor Kabila. He is popul-ar in the eastern part of the DRC, where a civil war raged for years; residents give the president credit for stopping the fighting. Bemba is far stronger in the western part of the country, especially in the capital of Kinshasa. Bemba says he'll accept the results if there's no fraud--which he'll only know was the case if he wins. A return to large-scale warfare "is everybody's worst nightmare," says Colin Stewart, an election observer with the Carter Center, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter's foundation.

For now most observers are trying to concentrate on the success of having pulled off the election at all. In a nation the size of Western Europe, with only 500 kilometers of paved roads, distributing materials to 50,000 polling places--twice--was a logistical miracle financed by $500 million in aid money from European donors. "It's a tribute to ...