DRC Elections 2011 Watch: Senate snarls Annex to Electoral Law… till Saturday August 13! (UPDATED)

Speaker Evariste Boshab and Senate Prez Kengo wa Dondo

At loggerheads

(Credits)

Wednesday August 10. The Senate snarled the Annex to the Electoral Law by sending it to its own PAJ (Political, Administrative, and Judiciary Commission).  In fact, in a stinging rejection of the lower house, the Senate didn’t even table the bill on the day of expiry of CENI’s ultimatum. Snubbing the Speaker of the National Assembly who was requesting speedy action by the upper house, Senate President Léon Kengo wa Kengo introduced instead three unrelated bills on the agenda: the bill on the protection of human rights, the bill on regional security, and an obscure bill on maritime activities. Incidentally, by sending the bill to PAJ, Kengo has somehow vindicated MP Jean-Lucien Busa whose motion to do just that had been defeated at the National Assembly.

At the close of the last parliamentary session in March, Le Softonline remarks, Senate President Léon Kengo wa Dongo angrily pushed back Speaker Boshab, who was pressuring the upper house to expedite the examination of bills passed at the National Assembly. On that occasion, Kengo, in aristocratic contempt, blurted out in front of national cameras at the Senate: “The Senate isn’t to be expected to serve as the chamber of records of the National Assembly… Senators in turn will take the time it would require to pose questions, to open a debate, and to send the text to a commission, if need be…”  

Before sending the Annex to the Electoral to PAJ for a 24-hour examination, however, Kengo first threw, as it were, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Adolphe Lumanu and CENI President Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda to the wolves of the Senate.

According to L’Avenir, the twenty or so senators who intervened chose from the outset a “polemical tone and frontal attacks” against Lumanu and Ngoy. The paper even goes as far as to claim that the senators displayed “blind passion”—blaming CENI, it complained, for the division of electoral constituencies, whereas this is clearly within the purview of both houses of Parliament.    

MLC opposition senators were particularly incensed by the ultimatum previously issued by Rev Ngoy on August 5: either pass the Annex by August 10 or else see the presidential and legislative elections uncoupled. Faced with the sudden fury engulfing him, Rev Ngoy had to meekly apologize for his ultimatum.

The opening salvo was fired by Sen. Toussaint Ekombe Mpetshi (MLC), the president of PAJ, who rhetorically questioned the very admissibility of the bill being presented to the Senate, as its cover letter was signed by an unknown entity of the bureaucracy of the National Assembly. MP Ekombe, a law professor, then went on to point out that an Annex couldn’t just be voted as part of a separate law already voted; the Annex had to be considered as a separate and different law on its own merits—otherwise the prior law had to be reintroduced in both houses, amended, and then voted again. He quickly got his way and the title of the bill was changed so as to reflect the fact that it pertains to the division of electoral constituencies.    

Then three conspiracy theory buffs questioned the whole foundation of CENI operations.

Sen. David Mutamba Dibwe (MLC)

(Credits)

Sen. Mutamba Dibwe wanted to know precisely on what numerical basis CENI came up with the division of electoral constituencies, as he couldn’t believe that the electoral commission would have “cleaned up” the registers in only ten day.

  

Sen. Henri-Thomas Lokondo (MLC)

Photo: Radio Okapi

(Credits)

 Sen. Henri-Thomas Lokondo came up with a variant of the conspiracy theory of ballot rigging simmering in opposition circles. He also wanted to know why the electoral registers of Bas-Congo and Maniema have still not been published. To my knowledge, there’s no electoral register that has so far been published. Sen. Lokondo also insisted on the opposition being granted access to the central server of CENI. I doubt if such a server is even in the Congolese capital—there’s no logistics to accommodate one in Kin. In 2006, the opposition went berserk when it was discovered that the electoral commission central server was in…Belgium!

But Rev Ngoy addressed some of the concerns of these senators, saying that the operations for “cleaning up” the registers were already completed—with the discovery of 14,843 “doublons” (“double” or duplicate registrations). Opposition senators wanted those “doublons” arrested—and Deputy Premier Lumanu promised those “inciviques” (scofflaws) will certainly be prosecuted!

This begs another rhetorical question: how would the police go about arresting, in a timely fashion, 14,843 citizens, scattered over the vast expanse of the territory of Congo, and who might have registered twice because they had in the interim moved from one city or village to another, in a country where war criminals are walking the streets unmolested?

But the senator who stole the show among the conspiracy theory buffs was most definitely Sen. Eve Bazaïba Masudi (MLC). She claimed to have gathered intelligence alleging that 49 million ballots had been printed out in China, whereas there are only 32 million registered voters. Was the CENI planning on stuffing the ballot boxes with the remainders of the ballots? But she also asked a very pertinent question: ballot papers having printed out in China without knowing the names of the candidates, how would CENI go about filling candidates’ names—in longhand?  Sen. Bazaïba also insisted on the access to CENI central server by the opposition, as if the ruling majority had already been granted access to that server!

After the session, Sen. Bazaïba told Radio France Internationale (RFI):

“To be convinced, we must also have access to the central server; even though I’m a politician, there are independent experts who could do it [on our behalf], to help us give credibility [to the process]. Because the elections, the actual rigging happens rather upstream, at the level of the central server.”  

Instead of holding forth at the eleventh hour, she should have blocked the passage of the law setting up CENI. For her, the very idea of the “independence” of the electoral commission seems preposterous. In her view, as in that of many a Congolese politico, the ideal process would be a simple power-sharing arrangements limited to the political class, just as it was under the transitional regime when the management of big government-owned agencies and parastatals were divided among the plundering elites.

In the same segment of RFI, Deputy Prime Minister Lumanu pointed out that the suspicions of the opposition were largely “unfounded”:

“We told them to be everywhere at the level of registration centers. If there were things that had to be denounced, it would have been there and then. We’ve now come to mere generalities. They claim: ‘One said, one saw, one heard…’ But there are no [specific] points of dispute that have been submitted. Therefore, to date, everything is transparent.”   

 I wonder whether the MLC senators who were so keen in savaging Rev Mulunda had noticed their former colleague, Professor Jacques N’Djoli, MLC senator till his designation by vote early this year as the Deputy President of CENI, sitting in the front row behind his boss sweating at the lectern.  

At any rate, the bill was sent to PAJ for “clean-up” and amendments. No one knows what the committee would come up with. Especially as it is headed by Sen. Toussaint Ekombe Mpetshi, an MLC stalwart. This is another strange Congolese parliamentary arrangement. You’re not promoted by your seniority in the ruling majority, as it’s done in the US, but by secret ballot by your colleagues. In the case of the Senate, the majority shot itself in the foot, as it were, by electing two opposition senators at key positions: Sen. Kengo as president of the Senate; and Sen. Toussaint Ekombe Mpetshi as president of the influential PAJ committee.

Noting with amazement the first clash between the lower and upper chambers of Parliament, Le Softonline was quick to point out however that in case of irreconcilable differences between the bill’s versions of the Senate and of the National Assembly, the latter would have “the last word”—citing to that effect Article 34 of the rules of procedure of Parliament of February 20, 2007, voted by both chambers and approved by the Supreme Court:

“Any bill or legislative proposal is successively examined by the two Chambers in view of adopting a single text.

 When, following a disagreement between the two Chambers, a bill or a legislative proposal could not be adopted in identical terms by each Chamber, a joint commission charged to propose a common text is set up by both Offices. The text drawn up by the joint commission is submitted to each one of the chambers for adoption. If the mixed joint commission cannot manage to achieve the adoption of a single text or if this common text is not approved in the conditions provided in the previous section, the National Assembly decides absolutely.”

Well, this would set the stage for a major national headache, given the time constraints CENI is facing…        

Senator Eve Bazaïba Masudi (MLC)

Kinshasa, October 14, 2009

Photo: Radio Okapi/Flickr Stream

(Credits)

 

UPDATE

Friday August 12. The Annex to the Electoral Law was passed by the Senate Friday evening, not on Saturday, as anticipated—the PAJ having expedited its examination. The PAJ returned the Annex to the Senate with a new title: Legislative proposal for the determination of electoral constituencies and the division of seats of national and provincial deputies.

Seventy-seven senators were present in the Senate during the vote, with 66 voting for the passage of the law and 11 abstentions.