MP Francis Kalombo (PPRD)
PPRD Youth Wing Leader
Organizer of the counterdemo
Colonel Eddy Mukuna, battalion commander of the riot police of the Groupe Mobile d’Intervention of eastern Kinshasa, thwarted the plans of both groups. His men, using tear gas and nightsticks, quickly dispersed both groups. A number of demonstrators suffered from tear gas inhalation, including UDPS secretary general Jacquemain Shabani. Col Mukuna said 4 UDPS “combatants” were nabbed.
MP Francis Kalombo (PPRD), from Kinshasa-Bandalungwa constituency and the head of PPRD youth wing, had vowed to send in his party’s counterdemonstrators each time UDPS would organize demonstrations.
The issue of the audit of the electoral register and access to CENI central server has hit a new snag. CENI wanted that this audit and access to its central server be made “in parity” between the opposition and the ruling majority. As it turns out, Kabila’s political cartel, the Majorité Présidentielle (MP), through its secretary general Aubin Minaku, refuses to participate in what it calls a “masquerade” and a “distraction” (see next section).
Aubin Minaku, secretary general of Majorité Présidentielle (MP)
At his press briefing
Salon Rouge, Venus Hotel
Kinshasa, Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
Tuesday, September 27, Aubin Minaku, the newly-minted secretary general of the Kabila’s cartel Majorité Présidentielle (MP), held a press briefing at the Salon Rouge conference hall of Venus Hotel on Avenue de la Gombe, in the Gombe Commune of downtown Kinshasa. He was flanked by André Alain Atundu Liongo—influential political operative from Equateur Province, erstwhile Mobutu’s top spy, and current spokesman of MP—and Jean-Marie Longonia, CEO of the Congolese Press Agency (ACP), who served as the “moderator” of the press briefing.
Minaku launched a multi-pronged assault on the opposition.
Without naming names, Minaku spilled vitriol out mainly against Etienne Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe who, he claimed, have opted for an "insurrectionary approach aimed at derailing the elections"; politicians "who make the rounds of embassies of [Western] countries...and maintain militias like the Interhamwe" in order to thwart elections! (Wow! This shows that Kabila's cartel has now appropriated the rumors alleging that Kamerhe is a Rwandan Hutu and spun it into the slogan: Kamerhe is one of the leaders of the Hutu terrorist militia FDLR. And from here to, "No wonder he'd been so vocal in his opposition to the Rwandan-Congolese joint military operations aimed at uprooting the FDLR," then the loop would be looped. This could backfire in the Kivus, where these joint military operations are so much unpopular.)
On political change called by the opposition, Minaku said:
“Change is an essential attribute in a democracy—if it is accompanied by an alternative proposition. The Congolese opposition has unfortunately no alternative perspective. Apparently, it isn’t ready to lead, to assume power, to will, and to act for the people. As proof of this, their difficulties to agree on and to rally around a candidate and a common social program like us in the Majorité Présidentielle. The people, who are the impartial referee, are aware of this and will soon draw a conclusion from this.”On the insistence of some opposition parties to audit CENI voters’ register and access its server, Aubin accused the opposition of: 1) rancor, as some of their companies didn't win contracts with CENI; and 2) an attempt at hacking the computer system of the national electoral commission:
“Associates of companies that failed to win contracts with CENI, they had hoped, through this indirect action, to make money before the official launch of the campaign--without mentioning the outright possibility of sending in destructive viruses [to contaminate] the files of the server, or still, the latent or actual objective consisting in dilatory maneuvers aimed at avoiding the date of November 28, 2011.”Adding: “It’s not at the end of a ping-pong match between CENI and the opposition that the MP would be drawn into the nonsense, without any understanding of the ins and outs.”
But pressed further, Aubin Minaku conceded that MP could participate in the audit if officially asked to do so by CENI.
3) MONUSCO weekly press briefing: Peacekeepers not planning to replace DRC police
Nana Rosine Ngangoue
MONUSCO Spokesperson
Facebook Photo
On Wednesday, September 28, MONUSCO spokesperson Nana Rosine Ngangoue—flanked by Lt. Col. Mamadou Gaye, MONUSCO military spokesman, and Yvon Edoumou, a spokesman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)—held the mission’s weekly briefing.
One of the points in Ngangoue’s briefing dealt with the elections. She first detailed the logistics of the deployment of electoral kits. She further announced that a 3-day “electoral retreat” (September 28-30) was organized by the Integrated International Electoral Assistance (MONUSCO Electoral Division/PACE [Projet d’Appui au Cycle Electoral/Support Project for the Electoral Cycle]/UNDP).
Ngangoue also announced that MONUSCO Director of Electoral Division, Bouah Mathieu Bile, met on Tuesday with “members of a faction of Congolese political opposition” who wanted to submit, once again, their demands to CENI via MONUSCO: audit of the electoral registers, alleged violation of the electoral law by the holding early political rallies, security of candidates, access to state medias, and the fact that the Supreme Court of Justice is dealing with elections’ disputes instead of the yet to be installed Constitutional Court. Ngangoue told the media that the Director of the Electoral Division of MONUSCO assured opposition representatives he will convey their concerns to CENI.
According to L’Avenir, in the Q & A part of the press conference, one of MONUSCO’s spokespersons said that the UN peacekeepers’ mandate was to protect all the Congolese, and in so doing, they back Congolese security forces. Their role is not to replace the Congolese police.
4) Tshisekedi once again visits war-criminal suspect Bemba at Scheveningen Prison Complex in the Netherlands
Aerial view of Scheveningen Prison Complex
On Wednesday, September 28, in yet another desperate move to forge political alliances around his candidacy, Etienne Tshisekedi visited another war criminal suspect in so many days at Scheveningen Prison Complex in the Netherlands. This time around, the Sphinx of Limete visited for the second time jail inmate Jean-Pierre Bemba.
Tshisekedi told Congolese expat journos that his intent in meeting Bemba was to rally his support for his presidential bid. Well, good look! Bemba’s own buddy and babysitter Adam Bombole is a presidential contender. And by filing to run for president as an independent, Bombole has caused MLC to be torn asunder. If Tshisekedi thinks that MLC party members would automatically vote en masse for him just because Bemba said so, he is in for a rude awakening.
5) Meeting of two dinosaurs in Brussels: Kengo and Tshisekedi
Etienne Tshisekedi and Léon Kengo wa Dondo
Brussels, Thursday, September 29, 2011
Video screen capture: Alex Engwete
A day after his fool’s errand at Scheveningen Prison Complex, Etienne Tshisekedi met rival presidential contender Léon Kengo wa Dondo in Brussels.
Confronted by the Congolese expat journos after the meeting over the terrible habit of Congolese politicians to powwow abroad in order to find solutions to domestic disputes, Kengo vehemently denied he had any prior plans to hold a meeting with Tshisekedi in Brussels. Kengo said he was in the US when he was repeatedly contacted by phone by Tshisekedi’s aides who told him the UDPS leader wanted to meet him in Brussels.
Kengo showed a bound copy of the print-out of the UDPS political governance project Tshisekedi gave him and said he’d study it, then discuss it with his “old brother and friend” when the latter returns to Kinshasa via South Africa from his trip to Canada.
Asked whether he would desist in favor of Tshisekedi, Kengo was non-committal at best. “First step: societal projects that have similarities,” Kengo said. “Second step, since these societal projects have similarities, then they should be molded into a common program. Then, find the ideal candidate who can carry this program in the interests of all parties [involved].”
Asked whether this meeting with Tshisekedi meant that he’s dropped Kamerhe, Kengo said: “Politics is an art form. An art of compromise. You don’t just drop people.”
Regarding the bickering between the opposition’s Fatima and Sultani groups (on this two groups, read section 3) Bipolar opposition: Fatima Group vs. Sultani Group), Kengo said:
“The [pro-Tshisekedi] Fatima Group precipitated things, without giving big political parties the time needed for discussions with their leaders. And having seen that the Fatima Group had made statements backing Etienne Tshisekedi, the Sultani Group had also engaged a dialogue to come down to the same objective: a common candidate for a common program. Subsequently, MLC was designated as moderator. The MLC was still in its job of moderator, [when] some started submitting their candidacies. If you look at the chronological list [of the submission of candidacies], I’m the next to last. What I was waiting for was to see one common candidate. The others told me, well, if we have to discuss about all those who pretend to be candidates, we will have a crowd to discuss with. Let those who really want to participate in the discussion for a common candidate submit their candidacies, then the dialogue could start out. By the way, when I filed my candidacy, I said, ‘Dialogue isn’t ruptured; it continues. If, those [of] who’d had the time to read me, would find those sentences [verbatim].”
Questioned by one journo over the wisdom of wasting the combined $500,000 in non-refundable deposits among the 10 presidential candidates vying to unseat Kabila only to come in the end to choosing one candidate, Kengo blamed this shortcoming on Tshisekedi sitting right next to him, who, as “elder in our tradition,” should have called from the get go all those concerned around him.
Well, Radio-Trottoir, our unbeatable timeless grapevine, called Mobutu and his associates “dinosaurs,” not “elders.” Uncannily, in his stinging and masterly written pamphlet against the Belgian King Leopold II over the atrocities then committed in the Congo entitled King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Mark Twain called King Leopold II a "dinosaur." And these two pathetic old geezers mulling their next move in what they consider as a poker game gave me the strange impression of watching, live, two dinosaurs dashing towards political extinction.
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