CENI brutalized but unscathed in National Assembly: No Higgs boson of fraud but electoral law to be revised

The plenary session of the National Assembly examining the annual

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.





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PHOTO: MP Eve Bazaiba