Developing Countries: Free and Fair Elections

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I have read the noble Lord’s blog on his experiences in the DRC as an election monitor and I give him credit for going out there to do that. He noted how enthusiastically people voted, but that is balanced against problems in the election. We are monitoring the situation. We expect the full results of the DRC National Assembly elections are to be published shortly. Some problems have been flagged up and we seek that the DRC electoral commission investigates all of them. We are extremely well aware of the problems in the DRC. It was flagged up to me, for example, that it is the worst place in the world to be a woman. The noble Lord will be extremely familiar with the problems and we are well aware of them.

[Lord Chidgey]

I want to press my noble friend a little further on the issue of the DRC. I, too, had the opportunity to visit the country a few months ago before the elections, but the issues that were obvious then are still obvious today. Is my noble friend familiar with the DfID report, Electoral Assistance and Politics: Lessons for International Support, which states:

“Delivering free, fair and credible elections is … a considerable but important challenge, logistically, financially and politically”?

As my noble friend rightly says, the electoral commission has postponed issuing the results of the legislative elections yet again. The international election experts have left the country—frankly, I think, in disgust because they cannot get access to the election data—and the diaspora from the Congo, particularly in this country, are traumatised by the continuing fraud in elections in their home country. What will DfID do to try to make some sense of it all?

[Baroness Northover]

The first thing that I would emphasise is perhaps a sense of humility. If noble Lords bear in mind how long it took us to democratise from 1832 to 1929—in terms of the franchise for women—it is not surprising that, in some of these fragile states, it takes a long time to ensure that the elections are carried out fairly. Positive accounts are coming from the DRC about the elections, as the account of the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, bears out. As I said, various concerns are being monitored, particularly by the United States. We are in close contact. My noble friend Lord Howell answered on this subject the other day and the Minister for Africa is also pressing on the matter. We share those concerns and we are taking this forward, but we need to bear in mind the difficulties.