DRC Supreme Court of Justice
Photo: Myriam Asmari/MONUSCO
On Wednesday, September 21, the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the petitions introduced by the following 5 presidential hopefuls whose candidacies were rejected by CENI:
1. Ismaël Kitenge Pungwa;These candidates were mostly rejected for failing to pay the $50,000 non-refundable deposit required by law to file to run for president. And the flimsy reasons these candidates came up with to justify this failure are worth examining as they bear on their good judgment.
2. Rev Jean-Paul Moka;
3. Jean-Pierre Lokongo Limbala;
4. Rev Vanga Kaniki ; and
5. Mrs. Léonard Lomami.
Ismaël Kitenge Pungwa’s lawyers argued that their client had contracted with the Commissariat Général du Cinquantenaire (CGC), the entity created in 2009 to organize the festivities of the 50th independence anniversary celebrated in 2010, for the supply of unspecified “gadgets.” But having delivered those “gadgets” to CGC, Ismaël Kitenge has still to be paid by that body, which has since been dissolved. As the government still owes him for that unpaid contract, Kitenge thought that a “compensation” of sorts could have been arranged by CENI. Countering this argument, CENI experts argued that the electoral commission registers candidacies upon being shown, among other required documents, the bank receipt of the deposit payment. Furthermore, nowhere in the electoral law is CENI given the mandate to negotiate “compensations” for breached contracts with the government.
Rev Jean-Paul Moka, not being present in court, his lawyers asked for a 3-day continuance, which was immediately dismissed by the Supreme Court. But that evening Rev Moka told a convoluted story to the media.
The Belgian news agency Belga reports that according to Rev Moka,
“CENI refused to register his candidacy, claiming that his file was incomplete for lack of payment of the required $50,000 deposit. Now, Mr. Moka insisted that he had introduced the receipt of his payment, made through the Union des Banques Congolaises (UBC), in accordance with the instructions communicated by CENI. (…) But, he charged, CENI used the same form as for the 2006 elections without realizing that UBC had been dissolved in… 2006 and taken over by the Banque Congolaise (BC).”
An explanation that baffled the press.
3. Jean-Pierre Lokongo Limbala’s argument was even more bizarre. Lokongo finally came up with the $50,000 at the Supreme Court hearing. He claimed that he couldn’t come up with that sum by CENI deadline as he had been arrested when attempting to cross the Congo River on his way to Brazzaville at an unauthorized crossing point. Upon his release, however, he went to Brazzaville to get his money and, therefore, CENI had still to register him.
4. Rev Vangu Kaniki’s file, besides lacking the required bank receipt of deposit, didn’t even have the 4 passport photographs needed. His appeal was summarily rejected.
5. Mrs. Léonard Lomami blamed the dysfunction of a local bank that failed to timely transfer her money
The last petition to be examined by the Supreme Court came from the chairman of the Parti du Peuple Pour le Progrès du Congo (PPPC), Rev Stephen Nzita-di-Nzita, an alumnus of Geneva College (Pennsylvania) and an evangelical politician who is not even a contender in the presidential race. Rev Nzita-di-Nzita took the opportunity of his appearance at the Supreme Court to deliver a sermon-like attack against CENI and the Electoral Law. He asked the Court to scrap the Electoral Law, which, according to him, is in violation of a few provisions of the Constitution, including the age requirement (brought down from 25 to 18 for candidates in provincial assemblies), and the college degree requirement—which, in his words, was conducive to massive frauds as university credentials could be verified by communal quarters’ chiefs in the stead of notaries public. Nzita-di-Nzita accused CENI of thus “aiding and abetting analphabetism,” which is “one of the fundamental problems that hamper the democratization of the Congo.” Nzita-di-Nzita asked the Court to postpone the elections for 40 days during which the electoral law would be sent back to the National Assembly for a rewrite! The mystified court dismissed Nzita-di-Nzita's petition-qua-rant.
Rev Stephen Nzita-di-Nzita
Chairman, Parti du Peuple Pour le Progrès du Congo (PPPC)
2) Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda talks to African ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa
Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda
CENI Chairman
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
(Credits)
On the same day that the Supreme Court ruled on the petitions of the rejected presidential candidacies, CENI chairman Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda met with African ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa at the Lubumbashi Hall of Grand Hotel, in the Gombe Commune.
During the one-hour meeting, Rev Ngoy Mulunda recapped the brief history of CENI. He shared with them challenges his organization had to face in a short time span: the “coupling” of the presidential and legislative elections; logistical woes; a last-minute surge of MP candidacies (see next section); CENI funding; the audit of the electoral rosters; computer systems glitches; and the high number of “doublons” or duplicate registrations uncovered during the revision of the electoral register. He said that there were 119, 000 “doublons”—40% of them due to computer glitches, and 60% of them were “criminal doublons.” He promised that in October he’ll send the list of the “criminal doublons” to the justice system.
3) “Dizzying numbers”: 13,401 MP candidates in 8 provinces
Wednesday was also the day CENI released the provisional and partial list of MP candidates in 8 provinces. The provinces that saw their lists of candidates published are the following: Bas-Congo (980 candidates), Equateur (1,463), Kasai Occidental (1,304), Kinshasa (5,734), Maniema (325), North Kivu (1,457), South Kivu (879), and Oriental (1,259). Three provinces have still to know the names of their candidates: Bandundu, Kasai Oriental, and Katanga.
Looking at the staggering number of candidates, the daily Forum des As exclaimed in its headline: “The numbers filtering out of CENI (…) are dizzying: 13, 401 deputy candidates for 8 provinces!,” adding in the body of the article, that this number prompted “an analyst to wonder whether, for the Congolese, the job that pays the best and that also seems to be the easiest wouldn’t be (...) the job” of MP. In comparison, in 2006, the number of nationwide MP candidates was around 9,200!
The candidates whose names weren’t retained by CENI have to petition the Supreme Court between September 22 and September 25.
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