A group of young Mbuti men from Biganiro, DRC, sit in front of their houses, which consist of makeshift structures made of wood and plastic sheeting. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

By Zahra Moloo
MUDJA/BIGANIRO, Sep 15 2016 (IPS)

The Bambuti people were the original inhabitants of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the oldest national park in Africa whose boundaries date back to 1925 when it was first carved out by King Albert of Belgium. But forbidden from living or hunting inside, the Bambuti now face repression from both park rangers and armed groups.

Other communities in the park accuse the DRC’s National Park Authority (ICCN) of expropriating land without their consent and without providing compensation, but park authorities say that rangers must undertake “legitimate defense” and take action when people in the park “recruit armed groups to secure the land.”Virunga National Park is considered a sensitive zone for the government because of potential oil exploration, mining and rebel groups.

Compounding the difficult relationship between communities and conservationists is the park’s location. According to researchers, it lies at the epicenter of an ongoing conflict and is affected by cross-border dynamics between Rwanda and Uganda.

Indigenous knowledge versus imposed development

Without access to the forest and to their ancestral lands to hunt and gather, the Bambuti have trouble surviving. Many depend on daily contractual labour from surrounding communities, such as cutting trees for wood that is sold in Goma. Seventy-year-old Muhima Sebazungu, one of Mudja’s community leaders, said that they are starting to forget their traditional knowledge of plants and medicines.

Patrick Kipalu, of the NGO Forest People’s Program, believes that the park and government’s exclusion of the Bambuti from conservation efforts is a waste of the immense amount of knowledge indigenous communities have about forest ecosystems. One solution, he said, would be to recruit them as rangers in protecting the park.

The ICCN’s Jean Claude Kyungu said that there are “specific criteria” for recruiting rangers, which the Bambuti do not fulfill, including having a diploma from the state.

Norbert Mushenzi, the ICCN’s deputy director of the Virunga National Park, said that the Bambuti have an “intellectual deficiency” and one way for them to benefit from the park is to “sell their cultural products and dances to tourists.”

His view is not unusual; many people, including those directly involved in advocating for the Bambuti, believe that they are inferior to Bantu communities. Although official policy under Mobutu’s regime aimed to ‘emancipate’ indigenous people and to consider them no different from other communities, in practice this meant promoting a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture.

A group of women from Mudja, DRC. Elders worry that the community is beginning to lose their knowledge of traditional medicine and plants. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Doufina Tabu, president of a human rights organization, the Association of Volunteers of Congo (ASVOCO), works with Bambuti communities living outside the park whose land has been stolen.

“In Masisi there was a pygmy who was arrested because someone tricked him into giving up his field. He did not have a title deed so he was accused of illegal occupation, even though it’s his own land,” Tabu said. “He was arrested one year ago and we are still trying to get him out.”

While Tabu advocates for the Bambuti to secure land, he also believes that they must integrate into society, “so they can live like others.”

“There are things in their culture that we must change. They can’t continue to stay in the forest like animals,” he said.

A report by Survival International states that forcing “development” on indigenous people has “disastrous” impacts and that the most important factor to their well being is whether or not their land rights are respected.

According to Kipalu, the living conditions of the Bambuti are far worse now than when they were in the forest. “Being landless and living on the lands of other people means that they end up being treated almost as slaves,” he said.

The Bambuti from Biganiro do not understand why they cannot access basic services and still be able to return to the forest.

18-year-old Shukuru from Biganiro completed two years of primary school and wants to drive a motorbike, but does not know where to begin. “It’s around 20 dollars just to learn,” he said. “And we barely find enough to eat everyday.”

Legal avenues and long-term solutions

Around Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which like Virunga, is classified as a World Heritage Site, the organization Environment, Natural Resources and Development, ERND, together with the Rainforest Foundation Norway, filed a legal complaint in 2010 for the Batwa, another indigenous group, to receive compensation for the loss of their lands inside the park.

The case landed at the Supreme Court in Kinshasa in 2013 where it has remained. In May 2016, the organizations submitted their complaint to the African Commission of Human and People’s Rights, but have yet to receive a response from the Congolese government.

Mathilde Roffet, from Rainforest Foundation Norway, said that even if the court rules in favour of the Batwa, they will still have to deal with UNESCO and the park’s status as a world heritage site. She hopes that the case can set a precedent for other national parks.

Virunga, however, is a different scenario and according to Kipalu, “a really sensitive zone for the government because of potential oil exploration, mining and rebel groups.”

At the national level, the Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autothtones (DGPA), a network of organizations that works on the rights of indigenous people in the country, have been working on a new law recognizing their rights.

Although the DRC voted to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007, the country’s constitution, 1973 land law and the 2002 Forestry Code make no reference to the rights of indigenous people.

The proposed law includes the protection of their traditional medicine and culture, as well as access to land and natural resources. Article 42 specifically states that indigenous people have the right to return to their ancestral lands and be fairly and adequately compensated if they have to relocate.

Since 2014, its adoption has been stalled. “They keep saying ‘we will discuss it next week, next month’ but the country is going through a lot of political changes, so they are giving a priority to other political issues first,” said Kipalu.

In the meantime, the network is working with the ICCN and the government on road map for the short term, which includes ensuring that indigenous people have access to education and healthcare.

“We do want the communities to go back to their land eventually. Some want to go back to the forest, but others are ready to accept parcels of land outside. It’s going to take many years,” said Kipalu.

The ICCN’s Jean-Claude Kungu said that the ICCN has been trying to improve relations with communities around the park through different initiatives.

“We have proposed initiating development activities like hydroelectric projects, water delivery, and other projects in favour of the population,” he said.

In the meantime, the Bambuti of Mudja and Biganiro will have to remain where they are. Giovanni Sisiri who was attacked by a park guard, brings out a bow and arrow and aims it at the forest. “We will have to start a rebellion one day!” He said, laughing. “We first want peace. But if the provincial and central governments do not find a solution for us, we will have to fight for it.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation

Excerpt:

A man from the community of Mudja holds out his arm to show where he was injured by a park ranger. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

By Zahra Moloo
MUDJA/BIGANIRO, Sep 14 2016 (IPS)

It is late afternoon when a light drizzle begins to fall over a group of young men seated together in Mudja, a village that lies approximately 20 kilometres north of Goma on the outskirts of the Virunga National Park. Mudja is home to a community of around 40 families of indigenous Bambuti, also known as ‘pygmies.’*

One of the men holds out his arm to show an injury he received from a park ranger. Others chime in.“When the colonialists left the country, the people who managed those protected areas were trained by the Belgians that conservation should be done without people, in the old-school way." -- Patrick Kipalu of the Forest People's Program

“Just the day before yesterday, they shot at me when I was looking for honey and firewood,” says Giovanni Sisiri. “I abandoned everything, took my tools, and ran.”

Armed paramilitary rangers from the Virunga National Park are tasked with protecting the park from poachers and trespassers, often at risk to their own lives. In Congolese law, human habitation and hunting within the park is forbidden, including for the Bambuti, its original inhabitants.

The Bambuti living in Mudja said that at times they defy these laws, venturing inside to collect wood, hunt small animals and gather non-timber products, but recently it has become more difficult.

“A pygmy cannot live without the park. Before, they could enter secretly,” said Felix Maroy, an agronomist and livestock farmer who works with Bambuti communities. “Since January 2015, the guards are always patrolling the area. And there are other armed groups too, like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).”

Imani Kabasele, a resident of Mudja and the head of the local branch of an NGO, Program for the Integration and Development of the Pygmy People (PDIP), said that two years ago, a Mbuti resident of a neighbouring village, Biganiro, went to look for honey and disappeared for three days. His body was later discovered, cut up by a machete. Kabasele believes it was someone from the FDLR that killed him.

Imani Kabasele, the head of the branch of a Congolese NGO, PDIP, said that the Mbuti know the forest far better than any other communities, but is it is dangerous for them to venture inside. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Militarisation and colonial conservation policies

The initial demarcation of the Virunga National Park boundaries dates back to 1925 when it was first created by King Albert of Belgium.

The oldest national park in Africa, it was later expanded to include over seven thousand square kilometres of land. Classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, it is now managed by a private-public partnership between the National Park Authority of the DRC (ICCN) and the EU-funded Virunga Foundation, and is home to about a quarter of the world’s mountain gorillas. Congolese farmers living around the Virunga said that its colonial history creates the impression that it was “created by the Mzungu (white man), for the Mzungu.”

After independence, other national parks were established, including Maiko National Park, and Kahuzi-Biega National Park in South Kivu.  According to the Global Forest Coalition, the creation of national parks led to the eviction of thousands of indigenous people who neither gave their consent nor received compensation for their loss of land. It was, they state, “in violation of international law” and the country’s 1977 law on expropriation for public purposes.

Patrick Kipalu, the DRC Country Manager for the Forest People’s Program, said there is an active conflict between communities around the park, both indigenous Bambuti as well as agricultural Bantu, and “conservationists, park rangers and other NGOs working for conservation.”

“The old school of conservation in the colonial period was ‘people out of the forest’ and ‘it’s a protected area without anyone inside,’” said Kipalu. “When the colonialists left the country, the people who managed those protected areas were trained by the Belgians that conservation should be done without people, in the old-school way. They have kept the same strategies, though the ICCN is thinking of a conservation strategy which is supposed to include and involve communities.”

Jean Claude (18, right), poses with his friend Denis Sinzira. Most of the youth in Biganiro only go to school until they are 9 or 10 years old. Credit: Zahra Moloo/IPS

Last year, in a letter to Kipalu, a representative of the customary chiefs in Lubero on the west coast of Lake Edward said that the ICCN had expropriated land without the consent of the people living on it and without offering any compensation. The letter also accused the ICCN of destroying and setting fire to villages. A 2004 report by a consultant to the World Bank, Dr Kai Schmidt-Soltau, states that the ICCN, along with WWF, claimed to have resettled 35,000 people from an area south-east of Lake Edward through a voluntary process, but that in fact the resettlement was carried out “at gun-point.”

Aggressive conservation activities are part of a widespread trend toward what some researchers call the militarization of conservation,an approach to protecting nature in which conservationists could engage in repressive policies that are counterproductive.

Jean Claude Kyungu, who in charge of community relations for Virunga, said that the park’s relations with communities around the park are good in some areas, but not in others, and that guards only fire at people if there is “resistance” from the population, for instance when communities “recruit armed groups to secure the land.” He added that the Bambuti are only arrested when they have defied the law.

When asked about the repressive behavior of park rangers and officers from the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) towards civilians in and around the park, Norbert Mushenzi, the ICCN’s deputy director of the Virunga National Park, said that the officers are “undertaking legitimate defense.”

“We also try to educate communities to leave and find alternative solutions, for instance to go to the fields around the park. There were 350 families in one area that left voluntarily,” he said. “The problem is not land. It’s that people want to concentrate in the park and we don’t know why,” he said.

But leaving the park and finding other places to settle is not so simple. One problem, according to Kipalu, is that people living inside illegally have nowhere to go. “The park is so big that it takes the whole area where communities work on their traditional lands,” he said.

Compounding the issue are larger and more complex political dynamics.  According to a group of researchers, Virunga lies at the “epicenter of ongoing conflict since 1993-4” and is “strongly affected by cross-border dynamics with both Rwanda and Uganda.” It is also a hideout for numerous armed domestic and foreign groups.

Communities who enter the park often do so with the protection of armed actors, and links between them are further strengthened by politicians who take advantage of the widespread sentiment that the park expropriated people’s ancestral lands, leading these politicians, in some cases, to “finance armed groups operating in the park.”

The authors suggest that the park “adopt a more conflict sensitive approach to conservation”, and increase efforts to improve local communication. But Jean-Claude Kyungu believes that the park’s approach is not particularly repressive given the enormous challenges. “At Kibirizi, the population lives with the FDLR,” he said. “Do we let these people just go and make their own laws not just in a park, but in a country, that is not their own? People who do not respect the boundaries have to be removed.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation

*The word ‘pygmy’ has negative connotations and is used widely in the DRC. According to Survival International, it has been reclaimed by some communities as a term of identify.

Excerpt:

Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Sarah Tucker
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A recent article by IPS journalist Ngala Killian Chimtom described the struggle of the Baka of Cameroon to maintain their indigenous culture and livelihoods while coping with the rapidly-changing environment around them.

The Baka are hunter-gatherers indigenous to Cameroon’s southeastern forests. They are masters of the forest in every way, experts in the medicinal, spiritual, and nutritional qualities of the plants and animals around them. However, as Chimtom explains, the Baka today are threatened on multiple fronts, and “consumed with questions about their future.”

The Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Logging, mining, and poaching have greatly reduced the forest’s richness by driving away animals and reducing biodiversity. Conservation efforts have made once fruitful forest land off-limits to human activity. Although they legally have the right to carry out some subsistence activities in certain protected areas, the Baka often fall victim to brutal intimidation, arrest, and even torture at the hands of those charged with enforcing environmental protection.

With the forest jeopardised and the outside world quickly approaching, this generation of Baka children faces a more ambiguous and threatening future than their ancestors ever knew. The term “marginalisation” fits the Baka exceedingly well – they find themselves pushed to the margins in almost every way imaginable. They are forced to subsist on the outer edges of rich forests they once knew as their own. Their rights seem to be penciled in as an afterthought in key legislation affecting their ancestral lands and lifestyle.

But the biggest travesty is their marginalisation in our minds. Their story of struggle is written as a footnote to the narrative of Cameroon’s push to develop. In pursuit of economic growth, the government has prioritised exploitation of forest resources and urban expansion at the expense of its striking cultural and ecological diversity. As a result, the culture and environment that form the foundation of Baka identity are under threat.

Sarah Tucker, a researcher and Baka education specialist, says Cameroon’s Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Courtesy: Stephen Cashmere

We often describe the loss of the forest and Baka culture in the past tense. News media, nonprofit organisations, and researchers decry the degradation of the Baka way of life, but often speak as if it has already happened, and there is nothing to be done to stop it.

The truth is that this assault is happening before our eyes. We have a unique opportunity to take action to stop the forces in motion from repeating the same destruction that has played out in countless indigenous contexts worldwide.

This battle starts with education.

Contrary to popular belief, there is high demand for schooling among Baka communities. The fact that so many Baka parents choose to send their children to school is a testament to the fact that they are wary of what the future holds. It shows that they are deeply concerned that traditional forest education will not be enough to prepare their children for the challenges ahead.

Developing approaches that truly incorporate and validate Baka culture is the most challenging and exciting opportunity before us. Many view education as a “civilising” tool, used to transition the Baka into the “modern” world. But this perception over-simplifies their aspirations, and fails to acknowledge that it is possible to educate youth in a way that reinforces their traditions while also preparing them for their encounters with “modernity.”

The Baka have been changing and adapting to the world around them for millennia, as with all people on earth: they are just as “modern” as any city or town dweller could claim to be. A truly adapted education system will enable Baka children to make informed and empowered decisions about their own future.

We must understand that all education systems – kindergarten classrooms, prestigious universities, and Baka traditional education included – consist of a set of cultural priorities and assumptions about the future. Inclusive and adapted education strategies will enable the Baka to gain the skills they need to thrive in their forest home, as well as adapt to the rapidly encroaching outside world.

Done well, this will instill pride in Baka youth about their indigenous identity and heritage, empower them to defend their rights and interests, and help them choose their own path in life.

Sarah Tucker is a researcher and Baka education specialist. She is the co-founder of Chasing Two Rabbits at Once, a Baka education and empowerment organisation in Cameroon. Her work has been recognised by World Learning and Opportunity Africa.

Baka children in Cameroon sit in front of a hut called a 'mongolou'. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MINDOUROU, Cameroon, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Essomba Dominique, a Baka man from Mindourou in Cameroon’s East Region, sits dulled-eyed in front of his hut, known in the Baka language as the ‘mongoulou’.

A wood-transporting truck rumbles by, raising billows of dust in its wake. As he watches his seven children play in the courtyard, Essomba’s mind seems consumed with questions about their future."The forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all." -- Clement Nzito

“These passing trucks mean these children are going to suffer,” he tells IPS.

As if to illustrate his point, Essomba grasps his spear and whistles to a nearby dog. The animal wags its tail obediently and follows its master into the surrounding forest. After three hours of hunting, Essomba comes back, with just one miserable monkey strung on his shoulder.

“Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to carry the day’s catch all by myself,” he says. “I would have found it easy killing gorillas, monkeys and even elephants. Now, the animals have all fled.”

In the distance, sawmills are busy, and bulldozers as well, opening up access roads to logging and mining sites.

“Just look at the way they are destroying this forest,” Essomba says.

For the Baka, the forest represents the beginning and the end of life.

The chief of the Baka village of Mayos in the country’s East Region, Clement Nzito, tells IPS that “the forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all, the Supreme God which we call ‘Jengi’.”

All this has come under threat as Cameroon gets closer to living its dream of becoming an emerging economy by 2035.

Samuel Nnah Ndobe, who directs Pygmy programmes for the Yaoundé-based non-governmental Centre for Environment and Development (CED), recalls that in 1994, Cameroon passed forestry laws “that had the effect of forcing the Baka from primary forests, and these were turned into national parks where they are not allowed to hunt.”

The Baka are allowed to hunt in secondary forests, “but that precisely is where timber companies are also allowed free rein to log, and that’s destroying the forests,” Ndobe says.

He regrets that the fauna-rich parts of the forests where the Baka used to hunt game have now been protected and guarded. “Logging areas are also guarded, and the Pygmies are now found on the fringes,” he says.

Conservation groups have been working with the government to find middle ground between conservation efforts, the rights of the Bakas and the exigencies of development.

One way of integrating the Baka in the development agenda is through education. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is working with the government to develop educational strategies. The challenge is getting the Baka into formal school settings while at the same time safeguarding their culture.

“The Baka have strong cultural ties to the forest, and an incredible traditional education: as they grow up, young children learn the nutritional, medicinal, and spiritual qualities of the plants and animals all around them,” Sarah Tucker, senior international consultant for WWF, tells IPS.

“Innovative education approaches must engage Baka children and communities in a way that welcomes their culture.  School must enable them to build skills necessary to flourish in their forest home as well as in the outside world,” she says.

Xenophobic tendencies among Bantu neighbours also keep the Bakas on the fringes.

“Bantu consider Baka as sub-human. They claim Baka kids stink in class,” Alexis Tadokem, head teacher of a government primary school in Ntam Carrefour, a village on Cameroon’s borders with Congo Brazzaville, tells IPS.

“Baka are used as servants to Bantu. They are tortured and sometimes killed in the forest by the Bantu,” he says.

“When our children go to school, they are beaten by the Bantus,” confirms Yana Nicolas, a Baka man in Moloundou.

These constraints have been worsened by the influx of logging and mining companies, as well as the creation of national parks which limit Baka access to the forests they have traditionally considered their natural home.

A research team from the WWF has issued a series of innovative proposals, including adapting the educational calendar to the seasonal movement of Baka, use of the Baka language as co-medium for teaching in school, involving the Baka community in the educational process, and streamlining the content of education programmes to the socio-cultural context of Baka.

“We believe these innovations could help restore the eroding dignity of the Baka, and enhance Cameroon’s drive towards attaining the millennium development goal on universal access to primary education,” Zame Obame, pedagogic inspector in charge of nursery and orimary education at the ministry of basic education, tells IPS.

Baka woman and child in the tropical forests of southeast Cameroon. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

When Daniel Mgwape, a Baka man in Mindourou of the East Region of Cameroon, felt like drinking local liquor commonly called ‘kitoko’, he simply took his biometric voter ID card to the village bar tender.

Trade amongst the Baka – historically called pygmies – is basically by barter rather than financial exchange. Mgwape exchanged his voter ID card for two “sachets” of the liquor, worth a paltry CFA 200 – less than half a dollar. The cards are reportedly purchased from the Baka for purposes of electoral fraud.

“Of what use is that piece of paper compared to a drink that keeps me funky?” Mgwape quipped when asked why he swapped his voter card for liquor. He said the Baka have their own social and political organisation, adding that he believed “the so-called modern elections are just another way by which the Bantu want to exploit us.”

Bantu refers to the 300-600 ethnic groups in Africa who speak Bantu languages, distributed from Cameroon across Central and East Africa to Southern Africa.

Slightly over five million registered voters in this west-central African country of 22 million people are eligible to cast ballots in the Sept. 30 legislative and municipal elections. But it now seems that the Baka people may not be part of the process.

“Elections have never given us anything – not hospitals, not food, nothing. We still have to trek long distances to get game, gather fruits, honey and tubers as well as fish,” he told IPS before gulping down the strong liquor and heading into the forest, spear in hand.

It is a rising trend among the Baka people, and the national elections governing body, ELECAM, is concerned.

On a recent visit to the area, ELECAM board member Reverend Dieudonné Massi Gams told the Baka that a single vote lost could be disastrous for the welfare of the country and the Baka themselves.

The indigenous Baka are a hunter-gatherer people who live in the tropical forests of southeast Cameroon. They number roughly 45,000 in the region, and depend on wild fruits, game and tubers for their survival.

With little access to healthcare services, education and potable water, the Baka have frequently found themselves on the fringes.

The bar tender, James Chika, said the cards were being bought by politicians hoping to hand them over to supporters who would vote in their favour.

“I get the cards from the Baka in exchange for ‘kitoko’ and then I sell them to politicians who say they will distribute them to their supporters to enable them to vote several times in the Sept. 30 legislative and municipal elections,” Chika told IPS.

The country’s main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, has petitioned ELECAM about what it calls the “falsification of voter ID cards,” pointing to Kumba town in Cameroon’s Southwest Region where over 1,000 falsified voter cards were uncovered.

John Fru Ndi , the leader of the Social Democratic Front, alleged that government officials were involved in the scam.

“Ministers have come from Yaounde and are buying voter cards from people. We are saying that we will not tolerate any rough games again. We are doing this because we want justice before, during and after the elections. And justice will bring peace,” he told IPS.

But Professor Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, a member of the central committee of the ruling CPDM, in power since 1985, told IPS that his party did not need to use unorthodox means to win the elections.

Pointing to what he called “the wise leadership of President Paul Biya,” Ngolle Ngolle said the ruling party had made Cameroon the envy of its neighbours, and a safe harbour for investors.

“Voters see a lot of development going on and their votes for the CPDM do not need to be bought,” he explained.

Both men expressed regret, however, that the Baka in particular don’t seem to understand why they should vote in the first place.

“It’s regrettable that instead of educating these people on the importance of the vote, CPDM officials are exploiting their ignorance to rig elections,” Fru Ndi said.

Thaddeus Menang, director of electoral operations at ELECAM, admitted that attempts by people to get possession of more than one voter ID card had been detected across the country.

“We have come across cases, where the same voters go around with several ID cards, and who on the basis of these several ID cards register in several places. And when initially you see a case like that it is difficult to determine that it is duplicate,” Menang told reporters.

“But that is what biometry is trying to help us deal with. With the [new] biometric voter registration system, those cases have been reduced to a minimum.”

Describing the whole idea of people selling their voter’s cards as “crazy,” Menang said “it is unlikely to find a voter with two, three or four voter cards, because we have been particularly careful about that.”

He also explained that the voter rolls “have the pictures of all registered voters, and the pictures also appear on the voter cards.”

He further warned that perpetrators of electoral fraud could be prosecuted.

Political analyst Professor Assonganyi predicts that the ruling party is set for a landslide victory on Sep. 30, likely to win at least 150 of the 180 seats in parliament and 250 of the 360 councils.