the exception of a small number of dewy-eyed foreign so-called
observers reporting from the Grand Hotel in downtown Kinshasa, every
single genuine observer of the Congolese scene knew it way before the
November 2011 general elections: It was sociologically and
ethnographically impossible for Etienne Tshishekedi to be elected Prez
of the DRC or for his coalition to win a parliamentary majority. The
eastern Swahili-speaking bloc plus the southwestern Bandundu Province
were all voting en masse for Kabila.
The numbers were simply not there for Tshisekedi. For one, the eastern
provinces are the most populous in the country and natives of Bandundu
Province, the stronghold of Antoine Gizenga's Parti Lumumbiste Unifié
(PALU), are "sectarians" who blindly tread the line of their
political elites. For the other, for voters in eastern and
southwestern Congo, Tshisekedi had conspired to assassinate Patrice
Lumumba in 1961; whereas Kabila was the latter's spiritual and
political heir. Period!
Defeated presidential candidate Vital Kamerhe, erstwhile Kabila's 2006
camapign manager, knew this open secret for fact. And yet he chose to
act the buffoon that he is.
Shortly after the elections, just after poll closing in the evening of
November 28, 2011, Kamerhe turned into a public crier, giving TV and
radio interviews left and right. In those interviews, Kamerhe was
leveling serious charges of massive vote rigging at Kabila and his
supporters. His accusations were apparently so precise and detailed
that some people, mostly dimwitted foreign reporters, started taking
them at face value.
Kamerhe should have kept blasting Kabila, the opposition's favorite
punching ball. But unfortunately for him, he went farther afield and
accused PPRD MP candidate, Wivine Moleka, a woman pol from the
Kinshasa Lukunga constituency, of having shown up at her polling
station with an armed police escort carrying stuffed ballots. He even
repeated that charge in an interview with Radio France Internationale
(RFI).
Maybe Kamerhe, a provincial sexist from the backwater of South Kivu
Province, thought he could slight Wivine Moleka, who comes across as
an outgoing and shy woman, and get away with it.
Little did Kamerhe know that:
1) Wivine Moleka, a Kinshasa-born politician who was running for
re-election, as per usual a media darling, had sparked the interest of
reporters who were following every single one of her moves. And there
are several TV reports with the footage of MP Wivine Moleka arriving,
unaccompanied, at her polling station to cast her vote;
2) The Molekas are a tentacular business and political family of the
Congolese capital, who hold their reputation and honor sacred. (By the
way, the older brother of Wivine, Albert Moleka, is Etienne
Tshisekedi's chief of staff and is arguably the last vestigial pol in
the UDPS leader's entourage.)
Kamerhe should therefore have been told that there was no way
Wivine--a Moleka to boot--would let pass his gratuitous and libelous
accusation.
By early December of last year, Wivine Moleka had sued Vital Kamerhe
at the Gombe District Court in Kinshasa on slanderous charges.
Now that the shit has hit the fan, Kamerhe is giving the sorry public
spectacle of a helpless idiot chewing and biting his fingernails after
dropping a clanger.
Consider the total grasping at straws of his defense; the pathetic
hair-splitting legalese his lawyers have come up with in a desperate
attempt to have Wivine Moleka's damning lawsuit dismissed.
At the last hearing at the Gombe District Court on March 27, Kamerhe's
defense lawyers wanted the court to dismiss the suit on the ground of
this tenuous technicality: their client was served the summons at an
address where he doesn't reside, that is, at the office of the
burgomaster of the Commune of Gombe.
A bald-faced lie, the summons having been sent to Kamerhe's various
addresses in Kinshasa--with copies to the Gombe burgomaster for
enforcement, as required by the Congolese Penal Code.
This dilatory maneuver having been dismissed by the court, Kamerhe's
lawyers, after a 2-hour recess, then came up with yet another
obfuscation: they were appealing that ruling at the appeal court!
This was the same type of obfuscatory maneuver by Kamerhe at a lower
court in December of last year.
The hearing was continued until the appeal court rules on this frivolous appel.
It's now dawning on Kamerhe that, unlike Kabila, Wivine Moleka isn't a
punching ball. And he's now also learning the hard way this lesson
from the heyday of the anti-apartheid struggle encapsulated by South
African women in this slogan: "You hit a woman, you hit a rock!"
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