1) Embattled Bandundu Gov Richard Ndambu returns home and PPRD office is torched in retaliation
Dr. Richard Ndambu
Governor of Bandundu Province
Photo: DigitalCongo Archives
Tuesday July 26. When embattled Bandundu Province Governor Richard Ndambu, a member of PPRD, returned home, tension suddenly ratcheted up several notches in the provincial capital, Bandundu-ville. In early March, the provincial assembly of Bandundu impeached Ndambu for “bad governance and embezzlement.” Then Richard Ndambu sued the provincial assembly at the Supreme Court in Kinshasa. And in April, the Supreme Court reversed the impeachment on a technicality and, as I commented here on this development while I was still in Kinshasa, “without addressing any of the charges that led to the impeachment...” And I added that, “as could be anticipated, denizens of the Province ran amok, and ransacked the governor's businesses as well as those of his relatives. Three people lay dead after the intervention of the riot police...”
Radio Okapi reports that “the federal office of PPRD [in Bandundu-ville], whose construction [the governor] had financed, was torched in the night of Thursday July 28 to Friday July 29, according to civil society sources.” The governor had planned for July 29 an event billed as a “political matinée” that has since been canceled.
2) Vital Kamerhe launches presidential bid at 1st UNC congress
Vital Kamerhe
Speaking at UNC Congress
At the Commercial Complex “Grand Bazar” aka "Groupe Bemba" (GB)
Kintambo Commune
Kinshasa, Thursday, July 28
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
Thursday July 28. Vital Kamerhe launched his presidential bid at the 1st Congress of his party, the Union pour la Nation Congolaise (UNC), at the commercial complex GB, in Kintambo Commune, the very venue where the MLC opened its congress on July 22. The theme of UNC congress was: “the imperative for political alternation.” Besides confirming his run for the presidency, Kamerhe unleashed a barrage of attacks against the incumbent regime. He charged that “all the promises of 2006 [made by the incumbent president] were falsehearted.” He then blasted the current calamitous governance, giving as vignettes of his charge the alleged embezzlement of money earmarked for the recent constructions and repairs of roads and thoroughfares of the capital city: Boulevard Triomphal, a 1.5km-stretch by the Parliament building, “swallowed” $29m; street lighting on Boulevard du 30 Juin, $6m; the hospital Cinquantenaire, $92m; N’Djili International Airport modernization, $42m…
Kamerhe also leveled serious but unproven charges against the CENI for bloating voters’ registration numbers in Kabila’s strongholds, especially in the Katanga Province:
“In one province, [namely] Katanga province, that has 6 million inhabitants, they go as far as to register up to 4.5 million potential voters, whereas Kinshasa, which counts 10 million inhabitants, has hardly reached 4 million of registered voters. If logic is respected, Kinshasa would have been around 9 million registered voters.”
What does Kamerhe mean by this outburst? Does he mean that more than 3 million ballots would be stuffed into ballot boxes in the Katanga under the nose of national and international observers? That’s why some opposition leaders and supporters think that Kamerhe is a fake oppositionist "infiltrated" by Kabila in their midst to divert much-needed votes. And to prove their accusation, they point at the way Kamerhe always goes into excesses in his attacks against the Rais as some kind of bona fide credentials of his membership in the opposition. But Kamerhe also raised a legitimate issue, however, that of the role of the Presidential Guard in the event of Kabila's loss.
3) DRC Communication Minister Lambert Mende blasts opposition leaders’ “practices of another age” and rips UN Rape Report
Lambert Mende Omelanga
Minister of Communication and Press, Spokesperson of DRC government
Kinshasa, Thursday, July 28, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
Thursday July 28. At a press briefing convened at his ministry, Lambert Member blasted opposition leaders for their repeated attempts to undermine the CENI, calling those maneuvers “practices of another age,” and adding that “elections are being organized for the people and not for the microcosm of the political class.”
Then Mende, soaring to his signature magniloquence, offered his diagnosis of the opposition leaders’ pre-electoral schizophrenic disorder:
“Obviously, these practices [of another age] based on a kind of physical hand-to-hand combat might have been more or less effective under the dictatorship of the Second Republic. You had in those times to shake the coconut tree to obtain the slightest right, and particularly the right of free speech. But things have very significantly evolved since then and, today, our country has moved to another stage. It’s meaningless to deny such an obvious fact for the mere reason that one isn’t in power. Behind the endangerment to public order, to liberty, and to the physical integrity of people and to properties—public and private alike—being forced upon us by these quite curious companions of democracy and rule of law, emerges, between the lines, a flagrant autocritical attempt, albeit unacknowledged. You cannot, at the same time, assert that you want the advent of democratic institutions at the highest level of the country and do your utmost with all kinds of pretexts and tricks to prevent the CENI from organizing elections out of which will issue those very institutions.”
At the same press briefing, Mende also ripped apart the UN Joint Human Rights Report on Rapes at Bushani and Kalambahiro (31 December 2010 and 1 January 2011) released on July 22 for “denigrating” the FARDC.
The Report alleges, among many other atrocities, that:
“[M]en in uniform identified by various sources as soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) submitted 47 women, including one minor, to sexual violence, including rape, abducted two civilians, and inflicted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment on 12 others civilians. They also looted at least 100 houses and three buildings and set on fire or destroyed at least four houses.”
Mende seemed somewhat to have been comforted in his line of attack against the Report by what Jean-Luc Marx, Acting Director of UN Joint Human Rights Office in Kinshasa, had told Radio Okapi upon the release of the report: “It seemed that the rapes were committed by FARDC elements but we couldn’t positively identify the battalion responsible of these crimes.”
“One can’t conclude on the basis of not fully elucidated incidents that the Congolese army is responsible of a significant number of human rights violations,” Mende ranted, “including sexual violations against its own civilian population. The Congolese government is shocked by the recklessness of some statements contained in this Report, as the one alleging the dysfunction between the military justice department and the FARDC high command.”
4) CENI to Parliament: Vote Annex to Electoral Law by August 10 or see legislative elections “uncoupled” from presidential election
Dave Banza Ngenza, Laurent Ndaye, Rev Ngoy Mulunda, and Adolphe Lumanu
CENI National Executive, CENI Senior Deputy Rapporteur, CENI President, and Deputy Prime minister and Interior minister
Office of the Deputy Prime minister
Kinshasa, July 29, 2011
Photo: CENI
Friday July 29. According to the website of the CENI, it was exactly "15:45’" local time when CENI president, Rev Ngoy Mulunda, flanked by CENI national executive secretary, Dave Banza Ngenza, and CENI senior deputy rapporteur, Laurent Ndaye, presented Deputy Prime minister and Interior minister Adolphe Lumanu with the bill of the Annex to the Electoral Law. The bill will then be formally introduced by Lumanu in the final extraordinary session of Parliament (August 15 to September 15).
Well, it seems that this session has to be convened even earlier than slated, as Rev Ngoy Mulunda threatened to “uncouple” the legislative election from the presidential election if the Annex isn’t voted into law by his deadline of August 10! Rev Ngoy Mulunda further said that this “uncoupling” would mean that legislative elections would only take place in 2012, if the debate and the vote on the bill are delayed any further. Uncoupling (or “découplage”) of the two elections was a bane of Congolese opposition parliamentarians during the heated debated on the electoral law. They saw it as yet another nefarious attempt at power grab by the ruling coalition. For its part, the CENI is engaged in a race against the clock that has no wiggle room, nor allows spinning wheels.
Well, it seems that this session has to be convened even earlier than slated, as Rev Ngoy Mulunda threatened to “uncouple” the legislative election from the presidential election if the Annex isn’t voted into law by his deadline of August 10! Rev Ngoy Mulunda further said that this “uncoupling” would mean that legislative elections would only take place in 2012, if the debate and the vote on the bill are delayed any further. Uncoupling (or “découplage”) of the two elections was a bane of Congolese opposition parliamentarians during the heated debated on the electoral law. They saw it as yet another nefarious attempt at power grab by the ruling coalition. For its part, the CENI is engaged in a race against the clock that has no wiggle room, nor allows spinning wheels.
The CENI leaders’ errand at the Deputy Premier’s office looked like a victory for the anti-CENI opposition leaders’ front, who, in their July 26 memorandum laid out 10 preconditions that would assure them of the credibility of the CENI. Their second prerequisite was a “vote at the National Assembly and enactment of the Annex of the electoral law before registering candidates.” A partial victory, that is, for candidates are still required to start filing their candidacies from August 7 to September 17.
It is worth noting that, in Rev Mulunda Ngoy’s bill, based on voters’ registration figures, provinces will either lose or gain seats at the National Assembly:
a) The City-Province of Kinshasa loses 7 seats;
b) Bas-Congo loses 1 seat;
b) Bandundu gains 3 seats;
c) Equateur gains 3 seats;
d) Kasai Occidental gains 2 seats;
e) Kasai Oriental gains 2 seats;
f) Katanga gains 3 seats;
g) Maniema gains 2 seats;
h) Orientale loses 2 seats;
i) Nord-Kivu loses 2 seats; and
j) Status quo in Sud-Kivu, which maintains its 2006 number of seats.
5) Etienne Tshisekedi lands in Lubumbashi
Friday July 29. UDPS leader finally arrived in Lubumbashi via Johannesburg. It’s reported that thousands packed Luano International Airport to welcome him. “It took an hour for his motorcade to leave the airport,” Radio Okapi reports, “and more than five hours” to get to downtown Lubumbashi. Tshisekedi’s meeting with Governor Moïse Katumbi had to be rescheduled because his motorcade was mobbed by his supporters for hours on end.
