Bandundu Province technocrats for premiership of the oncoming
government: either 1) His own deputy chief of staff in charge of
political, legal and socio-cultural issues, Marie-Louise Mayuma
Kasende; or 2) Olivier Kamitatu, the current Planning Minister.
Both are MP-elects from Bandundu Province. (Kasende's sister,
Joséphine-Charlotte Mayuma Kala, several times minister under Mobutu
and current vice-predident of the party Union des Libéraux Démocrates
Chrétiens (ULDC), recently failed in her own parliamentary bid in the
constituency of Kinshasa/Mont Amba.)
I don't buy this scenario at all. If it's true that the next prime
minister has to necessarily come from Bandundu, which has been
intrumental in having Kabila re-elected, the engine of the incumbent's
major win in the province was PALU. Ms. Kasende is from Kabila's own
PPRD party; and Kamitatu is the leader of the small ARC party, whose
provincial and national reach doesn't even come close to that of PALU.
The parliamentary freak win of ARC member and Bas-Congo native Konde
Vila Kikanda in Goma (North-Kivu) is just that: a freak win, due to
the popularity Kikanda had earned there when he was governor under
Mobutu.
It wouldn't make much political sense for Kabila to jeopardize the
understanding he'd developed with the formidable force of PALU over
the past six years. An embittered PALU could break away from its
alliance in parliament with the Presidential Majority and set up a
caucus that could render stuff ungovernable for Kabila.
Besides, Kamitatu is a loose cannon and a mercurial character. He and
his three close associates within the Presidential Majority
coalition--South-Kivu MP Modeste Bahati, current Conservation Minister
José Endundo, and presidential candidate and MP-elect Antipas Mbusa
Nyamwisi--have often caused grief to Kabila with their strident
dissent, for which they've once been fustigated personally by the
president at his Kingakati farm and branded as the "Gang of Four" by
pro-Kabila media.
My guess is that Kabila will keep PALU member Adolphe Muzito as PM--a
depressing prospect for Kinois who blame him for their woes and lack
of improvement in their daily lot. Failing that, he'd choose someone
else but from the same PALU party. If he were to do that, why not
appoint a woman as the country's historic first?
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