Godens Banza Tiefolo and Blandine Lusimana
Usurper and "fraudulent" designee in presidential CSAC ordnance
Undated photo
(Credits)
(Credits)
The Union Nationale de la Presse du Congo (UNPC), the guild and lobby of Congolese journalists, has just seized the Supreme Court of Justice over one member it claims to be an usurper in the newly-minted High Council for Audiovisual Media and Communication (CSAC). This is a major scandal the government doesn't need at this moment fraught with all kind of electoral perils.
The National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) and CSAC are defined in Title VI of the Constitution as "democracy-supporting institutions." And just as for CENI, the legislative project defining CSAC was duly voted in Parliament and signed into an "organic law" by the president on January 20, 2011.
The CSAC has a constitutional dual mandate of good cop/bad cop vis-à-vis the press: 1) "to guarantee and ensure the liberty and protection of the press as well as of all means of mass communication"; and to "supervise[...] the respect for good practice standards with regard to the information."
The organic law sets a 4-year term for the CSAC 15 members, who are designated according to the following quota: 1 member is designated by the President; 2 by the National Assembly; 2 by the Senate; 1 by the Government; 1 by the High Council of the Judiciary; 3 by media guilds (1 chosen by radio broadcasters, 1 by TV groups, and 1 by the printed press); 1 by the advertisers' guild; 1 by the Bar Association; 1 by the association of parents of pupils and students; and 2 by groups of media rights.
But the CSAC law has a major flaw: instead of its designees being first vetted by and voted in the National Assembly, as is the case with CENI members, each group of designators of CSAC members have to submit its list to the President's cabinet, and then presented afterwards to both chambers in plenary session before taking office! In the Congo, that kind of loophole is the breach where clientelists of all stripes would dash through in a stampede...
When the presidential ordinance of CSAC was published in the Congolese media on Friday, August 12, the Congolese press lobby UNPC was shocked to find out that the one member designated by its printed guild--Martin Mukanya (photo below), editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa independent daily La Tempête des Tropiques--was not listed! After a painstaking investigation, UNPC just found out this week that people in Kabila's office had replaced Mukanya with Godens Banza Tiefolo.
On Monday, August 22, UNPC seized the Supreme Court of Justice over this usurpation of its quota by someone it deems as "persona non grata" in the guild since Godens Banza Tiefolo was kicked out of the meetings of selection of designees after assaulting UNPC secretary general Boukar Kasonga Tshilunde. Tiefolo, a Katangan, is a grandstander who bullies people around him by claiming to belong to the "biological family" of the president. And as it happens, all the higher-ups in the president's office are from Katanga Province, just as Tiefolo.
If precedents are any indication, the Supreme Court routinely rules in favor of the government. But I don't think the president will want to cross the press when the electoral campaign is looming over the very near horizon...
Martin Mukanya
The legitimate designee
2) Journalists embargo MP Yves Kisombe for 6 months and will seek his impeachment in a “March of Wrath" on August 26
MP Yves Kisombe
Fed up by the verbal assault MP Yves Kisombe unleashed upon RTVS1 anchor and reporter Eugénie Ntumba and the mugging of RTGA cameraman Serge Kimbila at the PPRD Congress at the Stade des Martyrs, Congolese journalists decided, on August 23, to "embargo" the sexist injurologue for six months and to hold a "March of Wrath" on Friday, August 26.
The decision to ban Kisombe and to organize the March of Wrath was reached at a media powwow held at the headquarters of journalists' rights organization Journalistes en Danger (JED)--with the participation of powerful media associations such as UNPC, the Observatoire des Médias Congolais (OMEC), and the Association Nationale des Editeurs du Congo (ANECO). The March of Wrath will "culminate at the seat of Parliament with the submission to the President of the National Assembly of a memorandum calling for the impeachment of Mr Kisombe."
It seems to me that journalists are forgetting something... In the editorial denouncing the beating of its RTGA cameraman, the daily L'Avenir (also owned by RTGA) had namely "identified one Willy, bodyguard and member of the biological family of the Secretary General of the PPRD." Well, the Secretary General of PPRD also happens to be the Speaker of the National Assembly, Evariste Boshab--the very person the journalists will submit their memorandum to!
0 comments:
Post a Comment