report of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) has
just been gaveled out this Wednesday, July 4, at 22:03 HRS Kinshasa
Time (GMT + 1), after adopting the 9 recommendations of the bureau of
the lower house.
Some of the 9 recommendations adopted by the plenary session are a
major win for opposition MPs who want CENI revamped after the alleged
fiasco of the joint presidential and legislative elections of November
28, 2011.
The most significant recommendations are the following: the revision
of the number of seats in provincial assemblies, the revision of the
electoral law (including the composition of CENI), the revision of the
law on political parties, the audit of CENI, and the suspension of the
provincial assembly elections pending the adoption of the new law to
be revised by the National Assembly.
Everything started on on Thursday, June 28, when Rev Daniel Ngoy
Mulunda, CENI Chairman, and his deputy, Jacques N'Djoli, read
alternatively their annual report to the plenary session of the
National Assembly.
While acknowledging that there were some irregularities in the
elections, the two electoral commission officials stood by the results
of those polls they'd published.
Ngoy Mulunda, at one point of his presentation, even blamed the
previous National Assembly for aiding and abetting the mess in last
year elections by lowering the non-refundable deposit by list of
candidates to the insignant sum of $250.
Mulunda had wanted at first to set the amount of the deposit at
$250,000 for presidential candidates, and at $50,000 for MP
candidates. The National Assembly rejected both amounts and lowered
them to $55,000 for presidential candidates and $250 per list of MP
candidates.
Mulunda charged that the MPs "had opened wide the boulevard" of the
stampede that saw more than 18,000 candidates countrywide competing
for just 500 seats in the National Assembly.
A two-day acrimonious debate then ensued, with some opposition MPs
calling for the prosecution of Mulunda and his entire staff for
massive electoral fraud.
In those debates, two female MPs--MLC Eve Bazaiba (photo above) and
PPRD Angele Kahinda (a princess of the Chokwe ethnic group
encompassing southern Katanga and northern Zambia)--almost came to
blows over charges leveled by the former about alleged electoral
frauds perpetrated by CENI.
But try as they could, the opposition MPs couldn't come up with the
Higgs boson of massive electoral fraud, though, as I said above, they
achieved the adoption by the plenary session of the necessity of a
thorough revision of the electoral law.
On Monday, Mulunda and N'Djoli reappeared in the National Assembly to
answer the concerns raised by the MPs. After their presentation, the
plenary session then reconvened today to adopt the recommendation for
undertaking sweeping reforms of the electoral law.
***
PHOTO: MP Eve Bazaiba
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