Radio-Trottoir accuses of engineering vicious attacks against PM
Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon)
***
When the new government was ushered in in early May, Kinshasa daily Le
Potentiel was among other Congolese media that praised the wisdom of
President Joseph Kabila in selecting the unassuming and nerdy new
prime minister, Matata Ponyo, and hailed the cabinet of "technocrats"
the latter selected.
Well, no more!
The short-lived honeymoon has given way to a throbbing hangover.
Four months later, Le Potentiel is on the frontline, launching vicious
ad hominen attacks against PM Matata.
These past few days, Le Potentiel has published in rapid succession
two reports-cum-opinion pieces calling for nothing less than the
firing of PM Matata and his team.
But Radio-Trottoir or Sidewalk Radio--the grapevine cauldron where
Congolese concoct their conspiracy theories--has forcefully come out
to the defense of the embattled prime minister.
Radio-Trottoir claims that these attacks show the rise, after a brief
retreat, of President Kabila's so-called "Inner Circle," made of
powerful kleptocrats and whose racketeering activities have been
hampered ever since PM Matata took office.
I give below first the attacks against PM Matata by Le Potentiel, then
Radio-Trottoir's spirited defense of the DRC premier.
I. ATTACKS BY LE POTENTIEL
1) The first installment of attacks by Le Potentiel happened on
September 9 in a sometimes confused article titled "Government:
Shake-up or Rejigging."
The article recounts the meeting the previous week of the political
bureau of President Kabila's Majorité Présidentielle (MP), presided by
Speaker Aubin Minaku.
According to Le Potentiel, that meeting saw MP stalwarts come out
swinging against the "technocracy" of PM Matata and his team of
"nerdy" cabinet ministers.
And Le Potentiel sides with and relay the virulent criticisms against
PM Matata voiced by MP top brass at that meeting, whose day and
setting aren't otherwise specified.
Le Potentiel claims that the first stalwart to jab PM Matata was
Speaker Minaku, who was demanding that the government "refocus" its
action--though Le Potentiel fails to unpack the content of the
reframing the Speaker has in mind.
Unnamed MP sources cited by Le Potentiel charge that Matata cabinet,
all too deeply wired into "theory," don't have the "political" brass
balls it takes to block the body blows Kigali is administering on
Kinshasa!
Says Le Potentiel:
"The original sin of setting up a government of technocrats has bobbed
up to the surface. It's about a reaction-time deficit in the face of
Kigali offensives. Which would amount to an absence of sociological
anchoring into reality. A lethal abscence in this war-time period."
Only "seasoned" and "heavyweight" pols could be up to the daunting
task of countering diplomatic and political assaults coming out of
Kigali, Le Potentiel quotes PM Matata's critics charging.
"The management of a war is an eminently political affair," Le
Potentiel has one of those unnamed MP stalwarts angrily exclaim.
The pro-Kabila crowd points to the lone combat being waged by Media
Minister Lambert Mende on the frontline, who, these past few days, was
warding off verbal assaults Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe
had unleashed against Kabila in interviews with Colette Braeckman and
France24.
It's therefore about time, the pro-Kabila cadres insist, that the DRC
line up a government made of politicians with some "backbone" and
"able 'to talk to their [Rwandan] counterparts by looking at them
straight in the eye.'"
The feather-weight members of the current "technocracy" in charge of
government have turned politically blind by closely monitoring on
their laptops IMF macroeconomic bottom lines and benchmarks.
Le Potentiel therefore advocates 2 courses of action to President
Kabila: either rejig the Matata-I government by adding "seasoned"
pols; or just fire the whole bunch.
Not urgently taking these actions would be "suicidal" for the country,
Le Potentiel concludes.
(Source: (www.lepotentielonline.com/1025-ouvernement-chambardement-ou-reamenagement)
2) The second installment of attacks by Le Potentiel is outrageously ad hominen.
It published on Tuesday, September 12, and is titled "The 'hyper-nerd'
hogs all the powers of his ministers."
A look at the cartoon illustrating the article gives the full measure
of the virulence of the attack against PM Matata and encapsulates the
gist of the article.
The cartoon shows a number of barechested, subdued, disgruntled, or
angry fooballers on a pitch.
A pennant on one of the goalposts gives the name of the team as: "FC
Sourdoués" [Football Club Nerds].
The squad is facing, on the foreground and seen from the back, the
only player wearing a shirt.
On the back of the shirt of this bespectacled pla yer are written:
A) His name: "Kuna Matata" [Swahili = There are worries/problems]
(The name of the prime minister, Matata, is a substantive that has
quite an extensive connotation in Lingala and in Swahili.
In both languages, it means difficulties, problems, worries, crisis,
fuss, and as a verb conjugated with the appropriate auxillary, to
hassle or to be the cause of difficulties, etc.)
B) Seven numerals of the 7 field positions at which this player
simultaneously plays: 8, 3, 11, 9, 10, 7, 5.
This multi-pronged player tells his teammates:
"Our game plan is simple: To me all the passes! I'm the Striker, the
Defender, the Right Winger, the Left Winger, the Sweeper, etc."
Before adding:
"Need I remind you I'm also the Captain?"
(Page Address of the Cartoon: www.lepotentielonline.com/images/CARR5626_.jpg)
The piece itself is of the same scathing tone as the cartoon.
It claims that a "malaise" runs deep within the government,
threatening to tear it asunder.
This malaise is caused by PM Matata who's hogged all the powers of his
ministers.
Le Potentiel claims that the ministers are grumbling, disgruntled by
the micromanagement style of PM Matata.
They complain that they have to spend all their time in the office of
the prime minister, where they're "regularly" summoned and given
"orientations and instructions" almost "daily."
Those "nerdy ministers" are "stifled" by their "hyper-nerdy" premier.
Still according to Le Potentiel, the nerds in government accuse the
Prime Minister of having "set up insidiously a presidential regime at
his level" characterized by a "hyper concentration of powers."
In a nutshell Ministers have turned into "naked kings" and mere
"Minister Delegates to the Prime Minister" under the "totalitarian
power" of PM Matata, who is a "power-hungry" Doctor-Know-It-All"
freak!
Le Potentiel concludes with a prophecy:
"Matata Ponyo's days at the helm of the government seem to be
numbered, barring a reframing of both his working methods and of his
relations with the Presidential Majority that brought him to power."
(Source: www.lepotentielonline.com/1092-le-super-doue-accapare-les-pouvoirs-de-ses-ministres)
II. RADIO-TROTTOIR'S DEFENSE OF PM MATATA
Radio-Trottoir sets out by identifying the architects of these attacts
as the desperate rise of President Kabila's "Inner Circle."
It identifies as the chief architect of this cabal Didier "Didi"
Kazadi Nyembwe, former security adviser of Laurent-Désiré Kabila,
ex-chief spy, former CEO of the state-owned oil company COHYDRO
(Congolaise des Hydrocarbures), former MP, etc., and current chair of
the Security Commission of Kabila's PPRD party.
(A report by the UN Group of Experts cited Kazadi among war profiteers
of Africa's World War; and the 2005 Lutundula Commission Report
accused him of embezzling more than $7m at COHYDRO alone and other
state entities he'd run. Kazadi denies any wrongdoing.)
Radio-Trottoir strangely claims that Kazadi is assisted by Kabila's
twin sister Jaynet Kabila and her younger brother, Zoe Kabila; and the
influential MP Pierre Lumbi, who is also said to be the president's
special advisor.
An objective ally of this group, but fuelled by another motive is
Jean-Claude Masangu Mulongo, the governor of the Central Bank of
Congo.
The latter's motive is simply professional ambition.
In a few months' time (December probably), Masangu will end the last
leg of his stint at Central Bank. By law, a non-renewable tenure at
this stage of the game. And he may be eyeing the position of prime
minister.
Radio-Trottoir even claims Masangu turned down the position of finance
minister in the current government as he's nursing his ambition for
premiership.
But Radio-Trottoir alleges that the cabal being mounted by Kazadi to
have PM Matata fired is solely motivated by wonga.
And the pretext of the purported indifference of PM Matata to the war
in North Kivu is just that: a pretext.
And Radio-Okapi brushes off as preposterous the claim that
Communication Minister Lambert Mende is single-handedly battling
Rwanda.
"When the government spokesperson speaks up," someone told me, "he
speaks for the entire government--including the prime minister!"
Matata, according to Radio-Trottoir, is a bane to powerful individuals
and senior civil servants whose racketeering activities he has
dramatically disrupted.
Even on paper, the program for the mining sector PM Matata unveiled
when he took over loomed like a clear and present danger to
kleptocrats.
PM Matata vowed to have the contribution of the mining sector to the
state budget go from 9% (2010) to 25% by 2016; and its contribution to
the GDP from 12% to 25% in 2016.
This kind of increase, PM Matata stated, can only be achieved, among
other things, by "improving governance and transparency in the
management of this sector as well as the traceability of public
revenues."
He also promised to revisit the 2002 Mining Code as well as contracts
deemed disadvantageous to the Congolese state.
Radio-Trottoir further says that kleptocrats are already losing
millions of dollars as PM Matata is slowly tightening his grip on the
mining sector.
Gone are the heroic days of contrabands in broad daylight and of
opaque mining deals made in backrooms.
And what's now happening in the public sector can only add to the
worries of thieves of all stripes gravitating in high circles.
In order to control the exploding number of civil servants--more often
fictitious than real, PM Matata has fired every single civil servant
hired since 2010, retired older functionaries, and hired new
university graduates through recruitment by competitive examanination
in order to inject new blood into a decaying bureaucracy.
What's more, every single new hire in the public sector has to be
pre-approved by the Budget Minister and the Premier's office--thus in
effect turning the Civil Service Minister into a lame duck.
PM Matata has set up a system called "mobile banking," whereby
salaries of civil servants go directly to their newly-opened bank
accounts instead of transiting through some paymasters.
The system is already netting the government $1m a month from
fictitious civil servants. And this is only the beginning as the
system has yet to cover the whole country and be expanded to the
military and the police as well.
A few days ago, PM Matata has opened an independent audit cabinet to
track down fictitious civil servants, those behind them, and to bring
them to justice for defrauding the state.
PM Matata, nicknamed "Mr. Red-Tie" for the signature power tie he dons
every day, is on the roll... and urges Kabila to let him be.
Finally, Radio-Trottoir comes up with its own brand of dire prophecy:
if Kabila turns out to be stupid enough to yield to the pressures to
fire Matata, then he'll see how his own supporters will defect in
droves to the opposition!
***
PHOTO CREDITS: Via: laconscience.com
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