This follows a one-week freeze of CENI's activities ordered by its
board. CENI had then requested the participation of electoral experts
from the U.S. and Britain in the wake of the outcry over presidential
election results. American experts are due to arrive by this week's
end whereas their British and African counterparts are expected to get
here next week.
According to CENI Chair Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, who, along the other
members of the electoral board, stands by the presidential election
results, the role of the foreign experts--all of whom are "electoral
statisticians"--will be to ensure the transparency and the fairness of
results in contentious electoral constituencies. UDPS was quick to
dismiss the move as a gimmick, with Albert Moleka, Tshisekedi's chief
of staff, suggesting that a rational methodology would require that
the experts also take into account the results of the presidential
elections. Some other opposition leaders went even further, charging
that CENI gave itself a full week to perfect the fraud of giving the
"Presidential Majority" (MP) the majority win it needs to form the
next government, as required by the constitution.
The partial results released yesterday were for parts of the
constituencies of Bandundu, Bas-Congo, Equateur, Kasai Oriiental, the
Kivus, and Orientale.
The headline of yesterday's partial results was the following:
1) The wife of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the MLC leader jailed at The Hague,
won in the constituency of Gemena, in Equateur.
2) Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito was easily re-elected in his
constituency of Kikwit (Bandundu) on PALU list.
3) Still in Bandundu, Aubin Minaku, Secretary General of the
Presidential Majority coaltion, was elected in his stronghold of
Idiofa.
4) UDPS won both seats in the Kasai constituencies--as well as two
seats in the Kivus. ( The question in people's minds is whether the
incoming UDPS MPs would boycott the incoming National Assembly, join
the open rebellion of Tshisekedi, and thereby forfeiting their
astronomical $7,000 monthly parliamentary salaries!)
4) Astonishingly, Konde Vila Kikanda, a native of Bas-Congo Province,
came in first in the constituency of Goma, in Northern Kivu Province!
This oddity can be explained by the fact that Kikanda was the governor
of Northern Kivu in the Mobutu regime. People in Kivu still have a
vivid memory of Kikanda as a competent and uncorruptible governor.
(And, by the way, the current governor, Julien Paluku, was also
elected on the list of RCD-KLM.)
5) Orientale Gov Auchai was elected in his conatituency of Aru, in
northern Orientale.
6) In Equateur, current governor, Jean-Claude Baende was elected. But
some formidable foes of Kabila were also elected or re-elected. Former
Equateur governor, José Makila, was elected. And MLC stalwart, MP
Jean-Lucien Busa, who single-handedly nearly brought down Prime
Minister Adolphe Muzito, was re-elected.
7) Still in Equateur, Portfolio Minister Jeannine Mabunda was
re-elected in her constituency of Bumba.
8) The most terrible mews from Equateur is the crushing defeat
suffered by Environment and Nature Conservation Minister José Endundo,
who has done much to raise the profile of conservation from the
backwater where it had been kept for long.
***
In an unrelated development, the ban on text messages imposed on
December 3 by the Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Adolphe Lumanu
on the pretext of preventing the spread of rumors was lifted
yesterday--with effect as of today. I got an SMS today from my
carrier, VODACOM, advising that SMS are once again "operarional" as of
today and I got to send my first 10 text messages free of charges.
Mobile phone carriers are requesting compensations from the government
over the shutdown. This stupid move by Adolphe Lumanu is worrisome--as
well as the unacknwoledged repeated interruptions of internet
connections whenever riots erupt.
This being said, I think you need a refresher class on the history of
American-Congolese relations of the 1960s. There are a few scholarly
books on the subject--both in English and French. There are also
scholarly works in French that point to Tshisekedi's responsibility in
Lumumba's demise. As for Tshisekedi's statements to the European press
after the hanging in 1966 of Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and his
companions, there are contemporaneous TV footages that still exist.
You are a scholar, or so I thought: do your work of a sleuth!
So, before making sweeping statements, you better have your facts
straight and backed by solid evidence.
Anyway, the CIA actively planned the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba--though at the last minute Belgian operatives carried out the
actual assassination. At one point, Langley even dispatched to
Léopoldville (Kinshasa) one Dr Gotlieb, a professional assassin who
was supposed to inject into Lumumba's toothpaste a potent poison whose
effects would have mimicked symptoms of a violent malarial bout. This
also figures in the Congressional records--a Commission to investigate
attempted assassinations of foreign leaders was even set up (in the
early 1970s if I'm not mistaken).
So I did have my facts straight before saying that the US lacked the
moral creditt to lecture Congo TODAY on democracy when it is a matter
of public record that it once actively attempted to assassinate
Congo's first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Emery
Lumumba.
(Tshisekedi's long-running role as Mobutu's top henchman goes back to
the early days of DRC independence--including the arrest and
assassination by proxy of Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba in
1961. The US, which actively conspired in planning the assassination
of Congo's first democratically-elected Premier Lumumba, lacks today
the moral credit to lecture the DRC on democracy. No wonder Secretary
Hillary Clinton was pressing Congolese students to forget the past and
to move on... Only in the Congo would one see such travesty: the very
power that assisted in the demise of a country's founding father
lecturing the surviving citizens of that country without first
apologizing for its horrendous crime!)
Well, the exact place where the quickly-erected scaffold stood would
be somewhere right in the middle of the pitch of the stadium the
Chinese built several years after the state murders co-sponsored by
Tshisekedi. It is rumored that neither Tshisekedi nor Mobutu attended
the opening ceremony of the new stadium for fear of being confronted
by the ghosts of Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and his erstwhile three
ministers (incidentally, Premier Kimba was from the Katanga Province:
just to show that Katanga would never vote for Tshisekedi). On that
grim day, just after the hanging, a freak whirl of dust sent a wave of
panic through the throng of Kinois who attended the grisly event. This
triggered a stampeded that claimed a half-dozen victims trampled to
death. In the minds of the Kinois cheering the hanging, the whirl was
caused by the escaping souls of Kimba and his companions who were
hellbent on taking a few souls with them to the beyond as retribution
for being at the hanging. (Don't laugh at this seemingly benign
superstition. Four years ago, West-African and Angolan residents of
Kinshasa had to seek police protection as they were under the threat
of being lynched by mobs of Kinois men on suspicion of making their
penises vanish!)
But what is more outrageous is what Interior Minister Tshisekedi then
told the international media to rationalize after the fact the grisly
public murders of Kimba and his companions. The person of the chief is
sacred in Africa, said Tshisekedi, and the mere fact that the four
"Pentecost Conspirators" met to discuss about ending Mobutu's rule
qualified as a capital crime. (By the way, the four innocent men never
met, let alone discuss the end of Mobutu's fledgeling dictatorahip.)
This was an overwhelming reason of state to have the four top senior
government officials and political leaders to be court-martialed and
hanged, Tshisekedi forcefully argued. He angrily brushed off the
suggestion by the international media interviewing him after the
murders that it would have likewise been an overwhelming reason of
state to have the four "Pentecost Conspirators" pardoned. How the man
could sleep at night is beyond me...
And yet, this is the kind of a political blood-drenched
repeat-offender that a section of historically-challenged or
tribally-motivated Congolese wants to see at the helm of DRC. And some
Western countries--including the US--want to drive through the tiny
wedge presented by some "irregularities" having no bearing whatsoever
on the actual outcome of the elections their own national agenda: the
competion with China over Congo's resources for one. For had they been
serious about democracy, they should been lecturing Rwanda day in day
out. Or Saudi Arabia for that matter. But American oil addiction would
undoubtedly prevent Secretary Clinton to deliver such a fool-hardy
lecture to the "petrodictators" (Thomas L. Friedman) of the Middle
East.
Is something nefarious afoot? Is an assassination of Joseph Kabila
being contemplated? This wouldn't be the product of the frenzied
imagination of a paranoid! It's not like they haven't done it before,
have they? Everyone knows that the "worth of life" of African leaders
has always been, well, worthless in Western political inner circles...
Tshisekedi was planning his mock swearing-in ceremony on Friday,
December 23, at 11:00 Hours Kinshasa Time (GMT + 1) at Martyrs Stadium
in Kinshasa (in my previous post I mistakenly identified the venue as
Tata Raphaël Stadium). But that didn't happen. For one, the Republican
Guard has been surrounding the stadium with tanks for several days
now. Secondly, a heavy police deployment was able to disperse the
throng of Baluba youth gangs that had had responded to UDPS call to
show up at the Martyrs Stadium.
The disturbance was limited to neighborhoods in the vicinity of the
Stadium--that is Matonge, close to Tata Raphaël Stadium, and parts of
Lingwala neighborhood, nearby Martyrs Stadium.
The Baluba youth were chanting in Lingala: "We will die for
Tshisekedi! The people first! We'll drive Kabila back to Rwanda where
he belongs!"
But that tribal resolve was quickly blown away by the conflagrations
of flash grenades lobbed by riot cops. The retreating Baluba gangs
then looted a few beer depots in the Kauka quarter in Kalamu Commune.
I was in Matonge in Kalamu Commune near Tata Raphaëel Stadium (in fact
I'm writing this from that neighborhood) during the disturbance and I
only saw Baluba youth being arrested, then released by the police. I
didn't see one single member of UDPS leadership among those arrested.
Which goes a long way to show the cowardice of the UDPS leadership.
Primary schools that had opened for the day were stuck with kids that
had to wait for their parents to pick them up amid gunfire and flash
grenade reports in quarters close to the Martyrs Stadium.
It might be dawning on Kinois that UDPS is at its core a tribal party.
And those Kinois I spoke to--especially students' parents--are mad at
the mayhem inleashed by Baluba youth today. Fortunately, by 14:00
Hours, restive neighborhoods had been pacified by the police.
I'm sipping a crisp cold Skol beer right now at a sidewalk bar in
Matonge. Baluba drinking at the next table claim Tshisekedi has just
been sworn in at his Limete residence. The question I can't ask them
is the following: if he knew all along he'd be sworn in Baluba
President of Limete, why all this senseless charade in other Kinshasa
neighborhoods?
Besides the Western ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa (including the
US Ambassador), Zim Prez Robert Mugabe was the only head of state in
attendance. The other remarkable guests included the South African
Foreign Minister, the prime ministers of South Sudan and Rwanda as
well as representatives of other African countries.
Presidential candidates Dr Oscar Kashala and Léon Kengo wa Dondo were
also present--the latter in the capacity of President of the outgoing
Senate. CENI board members were present--with the notable exception of
their chair, Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda.
Another glaring absence was that of Kinshasa Cardinal Laurent Mosengwo
who had deemed CENI results fake. The Catholic prelate is conveniently
at the Vatican on official Church business trip.
In his inaugural address, Kabila bemoaned the "wild promises inderlied
by heinous speeches" uttered by some presidential candidates. This is
a not so veiled allusion to presidential candidate Etienne Tshisekedi
who kept describing Kabila as a Rwandan citizen throughout the
preaidential campaign.
In fact, Tshisekedi doesn't recognize the re-election of Kabila and
has vowed to have his own swearing-in ceremony on Friday at Tata
Raphaël Stadium, the venue of the historic Rumble-in-the-jungle boxing
match. No one knows how Tshisekedi could possibly stage this Mexican
standoff. The stadium is surrounded by army tanks and his Limete
neighborhood is sealed by cops. Besides, Kinois, who paid a hefty
price in the wake of the publication of the election results (the
official death toll stands at 10 victims), want to put this election
controversy behind them and move on.
Vital Kamerhe was the sole presidential candidate to file a petition
Monday to the Supreme Court requesting that the elections be simply
voided.
The formal hearing on Kamerhe's petition at the Supreme Court was held
on Thursday and broadcast later on national TV. Kamerhe's 21-member
legal team was led by Maître Jean-Joseph Mukendi wa Mulumba, ertswhile
Tshisekedi's spokesman.
The proceedings failed to produce the smoking gun of vote rigging but
instead hinged on procedural legalese, especially a provision in
Article 73 of the Electoral Law mandating that a petition be notified
to "the candidate whose election is contested, to the political parti
or political group that presented a candidate as well as to the
national independent electoral commission." This, according to
Kamerhe's lawyers, meant that all the other presidential candidates
had to be present in Court. An interpretation the Supreme Court
rejected, arguing that the other candidates had not filed petitions!
Exercised by this ruling, Kamerhe and his lawyers walked out of the
Court. They then told the press that they only went to the Supreme
Court to demonstrate the "dysfunction" of the Congolese justice system
and the fact that the Supreme Court is a "vassal of the
powers-that-be."
On Friday, the Supreme Court found Kamerhe's petition groundless for
"lack of proof" and proclaimed Kabila president with the same numbers
given by the embattled electoral commission.
Friday's final ruling by the Supreme Court was met with general
indifference in the streets where the sense of the inevitability of
Kabila's re-election has finally sunk in. No one knows, however,
Tshisekedi's next political move. A list of the ghost cabinet of
Tshisekedi that has been circulating proved to be fake. But UDPS has
called for demos on December 20, when Kabila will be sworn in for his
new 5-year term in office.
Be that as it might, the fact remains that the electoral process was
tempered with--and in a massive way.
As a consequence, Kabila's win is tainted and those citizens from
eastern provinces who had massively voted for him could feel cheated
and... disenfranchised!
By the way, who did Congolese voters vote for? Not for some grand
ideal of the country's reconstruction or any of the Western
traditional ideological grand narratives. Which reminds me of a
witticism of Comaroff & Comaroff: the end of Ideologies ushers in the
era of "ID-logies." In the DRC, political theorists have to mobilize
new concepts (with the help of anthropologists) to describe what
passes as politics and political discourse.
Thus, UDPS belongs to the Socialist International, and yet Tshisekedi
based his campaign on xenophobic and anti-Rwandan sentiments. In
Kindu, for instance, the capital of a Swahili-speaking province,
Tshisekedi said at a rally that a person claiming to be Congolese but
who couldn't speak Lingala isn't a bona fide Congolese and hence a
Rwandan! This resulted in the surreal scene of some of Tshisekedi's
own supporters pelting him and his Kinshasa entourage. (For more on
the corrosive effects of this "castration complex" vis-à-vis Rwanda
and the Rwandans, see below.)
Those of us who support Kabila aren't doing so based on ideological
affinities but for some primeval regional or linguistic motives. If
politics is the realm of the irrational, as Norbert Elias has it, in
the Congo, politics has receded to the level of blind gregarious
instinct.
This gregarious instinct is one of the defining Congolese cultural
traits. Consider the TV series "Falling Skies." We, Congolese, are
like those skitters and kids with implanted biotech harnesses. And the
surrounding specific culture is the controling will behind those
Congolese arachnoids and harnessed kids. Thus, it'd be intolerable for
an individual Swahili speaker to vote for Tshisekedi or, adversely,
for a Luba to vote for Kabila. The Kinois and other Lingala speakers
follow about the same pattern, and the controling will here is easily
identifiable: erstwhile Mobutu's top henchman Honoré Ngbanda aka
Terminator aka Prophétator (as he now doubles as an evangecical
pastor) and his Paris-based APARECO ( Association des Patriotes
Résistants du Congo). Ngbanda single-handedly crafted the myth of a
Rwandan couple producing a golem for Mzee Laurent Kabila in the person
of Joseph Kabila--for Kagame to rule Congo by proxy! A
seeminglyvfantasy Tshisekedi callously incorporated into his campaign
discourse--with success in those parts of the country peopled by
receptive skitters and harnessed individuals.
Now, the Congolese skitters operating abroad are the products of
Ngbanda (and now Tshisekedi) and all those who don't blindly follow
the commands of the overarching will are Rwandan stooges, traitors,
and mercenaries to be killed and maimed.
But make no mistake. Not one of those skitters is willing to die for
an empty concept as a nation. Having given magical powers to the
Rwandan nemesis, they're mostly cowards hiding behind the crowd of
other skitters to prey on harness-free individual Congolese in the
streets of Paris, London, or Brussels.
Congo has in fact ceased to be a nation under Rwandan occupation...
Well, I was thinking aloud, as it were, and to come to the sickening
realization that the country, the nation of my childhood is now
irretrievable lost is depressing--to say the least. I'm left with
broken debris of a once cohesive national narrative broken into
stammers of "un-nation-ness." They might have been right, those who'd
intimated that Congo doesn't exist...
Mulunda started out by noting the oddity of the Carter Center report
being written and published in the absence of its head of the
observation mission of the elections of November 28, former Zambian
President Banda. In fact, Banda had endorsed the process and called on
candidates who'd challenge the results to follow legal venues. Mulunda
construed the absence of Banda's input in the report as yet another
evidence that some in the developed world still use Africans as their
patsies in furthering their own agenda.
He pointed out that upon their arrival in Kinshasa in August,
observers of the Carter Center advised CENI against holding elections
on November 28--thinking that CENI wouldn't be up to the challenge.
The Carter Center based its observations on 25 out of the 168
"compilation centers," that is 14.79% of those centers--hardly a
representative sample to make its sweeping judgement of the process.
Mulunda was also stunned that the Carter Center failed to mention that
the lower voters' participation rates in some opposition strongholds
in the Kasai provinces were due to the violence caused by UDPS
supporters, resulting in losses of ballot papers and affidavits. More
importantly, a great number of the criticisms voiced by the Carter
Center were carbon copies of UDPS talking points, which made Mulunda
think that the Carter Center was bent on triggering a "revolution."
Mulunda then dealt a one-two punch at Kinshasa Cardinal Mosengwo. A
former politician who chaired the National Sovereign Conference (CNS)
under Mobutu, the Catholic prelate is politically-tainted material
with no political capital left to speak of. As CNS head, Mulunda
scathingly said, Mosengwo failed to deliver on the promise he'd made
to the Congolese people to hold democratic elections. Mosengwo had
even the gall of disputing the number of more than 32 million
registered voters. And at his Monday press briefing, Monsengwo wrongly
claimed to have found discrepancies in CENI's own numbers between the
partial release of December 6 and the final release that had
Tshisekedi's 64,000,000 votes vanish into thin air! Well, it turns out
that on the release date mentioned by Monsengwo, CENI hadn't even
published any results!
Mosengwo should just drop his cassock, don a three-piece suit, and
enter once again the political arena. His statements are
irresponsible and amount to throwing accelerants to the still
smoldering fire of Kinshasa. While heading the CNS, Monsengwo is said
to have told people about his presidential ambition. Well, this
ambition will never materialize in Monsengwo's current incarnation as
an unhinged pyromaniac...
Last night, in the downpour that started at around 2 am, inmates of
the military Ndolo Prison attempted a daring jailbreak. The mutiny
was met with heavy gunfire by military police. The government has yet
to release the number of casualties, if there were any.
DRC acting top cop Gen Chatles Bisengimana put the death toll at 4
citywide--victims, he said, of stray bullets. (As Gen Bisengimana is a
Banyamulenge, Kinois accuse Kabila of bringing in his fellow Rwandan
citizens to carry out massacres in the Congolese capital.)
Also yesterday, at a press briefing, Information Minister Lambert
Mende bristled at the latest shenanigan pulled by Tshiseseki. He
questiioned the sanity of the self-proclaimed DRC president who, on
the same day, told Radio Okapi he won with 54%, then went on to tell
Radio France Internationale (RFI) he won with 75%. If you add up
percentages given by Tshisekedi (plus the number of votes obtained by
other candidates), Mende said, you get well over 100%!
Tshisekedi's "irrationality," Mende warned, is verging on scoffing the
law. And this won't be tolerated. He issued a veiled threat at RFI,
warning media outlets relaying Tshisekedi's "posturing" they'd bear
the full brunt of the law. (RFI has only recently regained its FM
signal over Kin after a lengthy suspension for "discrediting" the
FARDC.)
I also ventured to Victoire Circle today. Whereas in my neighborhood
electricy poles and streetlamps were brought down or destroyed),
Victoire was unscathed though tepid in the drizzle. A heavy police
presence in the square acted as a strong deterrent during the riots.
I met Kabibi, a Kisangani native who owns a "nganda" (sidewalk bar)
on Bolobolo Avenue in Kasa-Vubu Commune, who told me she had to call
the police during the riots to protect her from her neighbors who were
accusing her of being one of those Swahili-Rwandans who had voted for
Kabila.
On Oshwe Avenue in Kalamu Commune, people told me Kinshasa Gov André
Kimbuta celebrated Kabila's victory yesterday at "Bana-Kin" nganda. As
a matter-of-fact, there are quarters where people did celebrate the
incumbent's victory. Camp-Luka in the Kintambo Commune is the
stronghold of the Bayaka ethnic group of Bandundu Province, carried by
Kabila by a staggering 73.4% (vs. Tshisekedi's paltry 19.55%). Well,
at Camp Luka, people celebrated into the wee hours of morning...
Though the city.appears to have cooled down, I overheard someone
advising a friend not to get out tomorrow: Tshisekedi will issue his
"watchword" on Monday. The sword of Damocles is thus dangerously
hanging by a hair above Kinois' heads...
He claimed, in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI),
that he won with 75% (!), and hence, is DRC president-elect! Asked
about Kabila's score, Tshisekedi placed it at around "22% or 33%."
He further insists that as the Supreme Court is a "Kabila's
institution," he's not going to file any legal challenge and wants the
"international community" to have Kabila removed and him installed as
DRC rightful president!
One wonders where Tshisekedi could possibly come up with his 75% win
when he failed to carry Equateur as anticipated (Kengo won in his
province).
Tshisekedi didn't start this idiotic challenge in the hope of
triggering a constitutional crisis. By proclaiming himself the winner,
sore-loser Tshisekedi has in fact called for an insurgency in the
capital. Kamrhe, of late the most fanatical of Tshisekedi's
backslappers, also announced Tshisekedi as the winner. Even Mobutu
Nzanga, who garnered less than 1%, qualified CENI results as "an
electoral hold-up."
***
Spontaneous demos broke out in Kin soon after the publication of the
results. Chinese businesses were nearly looted in Kintambo Commune. In
my neighborhood, a small police station was torched. The standoff is
continuing this morning--with riot cops fanning out, shooting in the
air, and lobbing tear gas canisters. I'm having coffee without sugar
and milk--all convenience stores having shut down. There's no public
transportation. And there are reports of people hit by stray
bullets...
The opposition, belatedly rallied around Etienne Tshisekedi, seems to
have found another wrong tree to bark. It now demands that CENI
produce, alongside the provisional results, the "real affidavits"
("procès-verbaux" or "PV") by polling station underlying those
numbers.
The opposition is backed in this demand by Western diplomatic missions
accredited to Kinshasa.
Some diplomats even appear to have now considerably watered down their
initial sweeping endorsement of CENI in the wake of the 28 November
general elections.
One Western diplomat told me today that in Katanga credible
pre-electoral projections of Tshisekedi's score might have been
deflated by a whopping 10%! To which I retorted that even if the 10%
was given to Tshisekedi, there's just no way the Sphinx of Limete
would clamber out of the abyss he's dug himself into.
The same diplomat predicted that CENI might end up being hard put to
come up with the actual affidavits of legislative elections from the
country's interior!
Last Thursday, the diplomat visited CENI national center at FIKIN in
Lemba Commune (that night, it rained cats and dogs over Kinshasa--a
deluge that lasted through Friday morning). The diplomat described the
place as being in a state of near pandemonium, and worried that
cardboard boxes (containing affidavits and other documents related to
legislative election from the interior) scattered helter-skelter in
the warehouse might have been damaged beyond recovery by the rain!
Well, we aren't going to jump the gun, are we? This is only a wild
guess...
But, what's more chilling was the diplomat'account of the situation on
the ground in northern Katanga. In and around Kalemie, for instance,
the diplomat described what appears to be a low-intensity ethnic
cleansing between UDPS and Kyungu's UNAFEC--with pro-Kyungu partisans
marking with a black cross the doors of Luba and UDPS members'
residences!
***
Though there were pedestrians and cars downtown today, the city's
economic and administrative pulse has almost ground to a halt. The
headline of one of the few opposition newspapers still appearing
screamed: "Ville morte!" (ghost city). (Major pro-Tshisekedi
papers--like the daily "Le Phare"--have been shut down for fuelling
anti-CENI rhetoric.)
There are no longer "wewas" (motorcycle cabbies) roaming thoroughfares
with 3 passengers on their back seats. Two days ago, Kinshasa Gov
André Kimbuta issued a city ordinance banning motorcycle taxis from
major arteries for the danger they represent to the safety of other
commuters and their own! Stiff penalties--including the seizure of the
offending bikes--have already been meted out. But Radio-Trottoir
doesn't buy the rationale of public safety put forth by the governor.
Kinois claim that most "wewas," who are nearly all Luba tribesmen,
were staunch supporters of Tshitshi during the electoral campaign. And
the gobernatorial ordinance is a retributive act in the guise of
public safety and the well-being of "wewas." But by and large Kinois
could live without "wewas" who are universally blamed for reckless
bike riding and DUI...
Ordinarily, a taxi takes in 4 fares (1 on the passenger seat by the
driver, 3 in the back seat). But I rode today in grand style--from
Grand Hotel to Place Victoire, I was the lone passenger of a dejected
cabbie!
"Fucking guys ought to get over with it already," he scowled.
"Jesus-Mary-Joseph! We alreadly know the name of the one the Whites
have chosen for us! Let's move on! How am I supposed to scrape a
living with this! These elections are fucking stupid, I tell you!"
He then went on to tell me that a Kimbanguist church was torched last
night in the Kimbanseke Commune where he lives--and a morgue and a
school operated by the same church were ransacked beyond recognition.
"It's not like they're looting or taking anything away. They just
trash the place!"
(Well, the Kimbanguists have been busy peddling a so-called prophecy
by Prophet Simon Kimbangu prophesying that the 4th DRC
president--Kabila--would be a Moses figure who would lead the
Congolese people from the desert of ruins to the elysian pastures of
paradisiacal prosperity! Small wonder Kimbanguists are now at the
receiving end of the wrath of pro-Tshitshi "informal sovereigns" and
"doppelganger anticitizens.")
With the left arm out and up and the hand tracing a circle in the air
to tell prospective fares we were headed to Victoire trafic circle,
the disgruntled cabby then donned the mantle of an academic political
theorist.
According to the cabdriver, this is no country for elections! In fact,
the political system has got to be entirely overhauled, he proclaimed.
Not into like the extreme "illiberal democracy" of Rwanda, mind you!
But into some political formation akin to the government of a
science-fiction intergalactic confederacy!
Each one of the 400-odd tribal groups appoint or elect one delegate,
still according to the taxi driver. At the provincial level, tribal
delegates then go through a vote to select one delegate of the
province. After which, the 11 provincial delegates come to Kin to form
the ruling council of the republic--with one of the council members
acting as a figurehead and the others retaining veto and impeachment
powers. I got a name for this futuristic DRC: the Tribal Republic of
the Congo!
A donnybrook pitting a 20-jeep-strong patroling police convoy against
Selembao Commune residents erupted in the morning of Wednesday,
December 9. Significantly, the disturbance took place on ex-Avenue du
24 Novembre, about 800 meters south of Makala Central Prison.
Residents, who woke up angered by CENI 48-hour postponement of the
announcement of the provisional results of the presidential election,
saw the police show of force as a blatant attempt at intimidation and
stormed the road--hurling insults and projectiles at the patrol. One
hothead threw an old tire at the open back of one of the jeeps where
sat riot cops who warded off the huge projectile with their plastic
shields. A dozen tear gas canisters were fired to disperse the crowd
of "informal sovereigns." The small riot abated by midday...
CENI couldn't annouce the provisional results Tuesday as planned as it
still had to receive the sworn affidavits ("procès-verbaux") of the
remaining "compilation centers" (among them, those of the polling
stations where votes were held 2 days after election day). CENI did
however publish the 5th installment of partial results, bringing the
total count of votes published at 89.29%. Kabila has widened his lead
by more than 3 million votes...
For the first time in this rocky process, UDPS didn't make a fuss
about CENI missing its deadline. But the real leadership UDPS has yet
to display is for Etienne Tshisekedi to call Kabila to thank him for a
well fought campaign and to make a concession speech...
2) Kudura Kasongo nabbeb with diplomatic passport at Beach Ngobila crossing
The rumor turns out to be true after all: there are moneyed Kinois
fleeing to Brazzaville ahead of the looming twister of presidential
results. On Wednesday, erstwhile Kabila spokesman and MP candidate
Kudura Kasongo was nabbed at Beach Ngobila crossing as he was about to
skip town. He was illegally carrying a diplomatic passport that had to
be returned when he was fired by the end of 2009. He was accompanied
by his wife, MP Pascaline Kudura. Kudura Kasongo, in his current
incarnation, is one of the most vocal foes of Kabila. He and MP
Pascaline Kudura own the TV channel CMZ, which, they claim, is being
hounded by Kabila's "henchmen" for thei couple's unwavering support
for Vital Kamerhe. CMZ has been off-air of late...
As could be anticipated, Tshisekedi and his sycophants have rejected
these results and second-guessed the unplanned CENI incremental
releases of partial results as "politically motivated." (A smart move
by CENI, in my view, this gradual release of steam.)
And sticking to UDPS worn-out talking-point of describing CENI Chair
Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda as partial to Kabila, Tshisekedi proffered yet
another one of his routine Armaggedon-crazed and raving imprecations
on Saturday.
Said Tshisekedi: "UDPS rejects these results, and warns Ngoy Mulunda
and Kabila they should respect the will of the people... Failing that,
they risk committing suicidal acts!" Adding that he was mulling
issuing a doomsday "mot d'ordre" (watchword)!
Whatever that means... Wait a minute! Maybe the man seriously means
what he says. Who knows? He's been behaving like a loonie for quite
some time. He may seriously expect to see Kabila and Mulunda enact a
dramatic public murder-suicide at the sight of UDPS murderous mobs his
"watchword" would loose upon the city and the country!
Not to be outdone, crushed presidential hopefuls Vital Kamerhe and
Léon Kengo wa Dondo--including the paper-weight and farcical
presidential candidate Nicéphore Kakese-- followed suit. The most
extremist in this cast of sore losers is Kamerhe. "This joke has been
going on for too long," Kamerhe exclaimed, in an unprovoked non
sequitur. "And we got to put a stop to the theft of the resources of
our country!"
This deleterious climate has prompted the national conference of
Catholic bishops (CENCO), which had deployed more than 30,000
electoral observers countrywide, to withdraw from a post-electoral
seminar with international NGOs it was planning on attending.
A sad Mgr Nicolas Djombo, CENCO president, painted a frightening state
of the country at the moment: "The image we're evincing is that of a
bullet train headed straight against a wall!"
No wonder SGSR and MONUSCO Chief of Mission, Ambassador Roger Meece,
held today an emergency meeting with Kabila and Tshisekedi--no doubt
to ask both sides to hold their horses. According to Radio-Trottoir,
the powwow was all about Meece attempting to convince defeated Kabila
to agree to a Kenya-like power-sharing arrangement with Tshisekedi!
(BTW, the fetid swamp of rumors that Kinshasa and the rest of the
country have become should serve as a warning for worse to come to
politicians who forget to prioritize education and public libraries in
government's investment budgets.)
In the streets, Kinois are convinced they are witnessing the biggest
electoral fraud in the recorded history of the event. "Mulunda is
making up numbers as he goes along," I heard today a Kinois angrily
say of CENI chair. "A fucking numerologist!"
On Kasa-Vubu Avenue in Kalamu Commune, two young mechanics repairing a
lemon were exercised at the sight of a heavily-armed riot police
patrol jeep--these patrols are ubiquitous now. They were particularly
outraged at the (false) rumor of a curfew in Kinshasa starting at 9 pm
tonight (Monday). "They think we're gonna fight at night?," one of
them sneered. "We'll hit them in broad daylight!" The pair also told
me that Rev Mulunda will be announcing the provisional final results
tonight at midnight plus 1 second (!), which would be Tuesday (I
couldn't verify this claim, though it's widely held citywide)...
Some of these rumors even made evening news on Radio France
Internationale--like the one alleging that 3 thousand Kinois have
already fled to neighboring Brazzaville to weather the storm of
Tshisekedi's fatwa. These rumors are so out of hand that the
government had ordered at one point mobile phone service providers to
shut down their SMS functions! A worrisome precedent in a country
courted by China!...
The funniest comment I heard today was in Bandalungwa commune. It came
from a disgruntled pro-Tshisekedi woman, a shopkeeper, who wrongly
thinks she'd been disenfranchised by Rev Mulunda. She angrily waved
off an evangelical street preacher who was attempting to pull an
Allelujah-for-money stunt in front of her shop, and yelled after the
confused Man-of-God:
"You, mofo, I don't believe in protestant pastors anymore!
Vote-riggers! Thieves! Crooks! Satanists! Numerologists! I'm going
back to the fold of the Catholic Church!"
I was tempted to remind the good woman that the once much-maligned
Appolinaire Malu-Malu, the predecessor of Mulunda who presided over
the 2006 election, is a Catholic priest: he was also called a
"vote-rigger," a "satanist," and a "numerologist"! But I looked around
and smelled insurgency in the crowded corner of the street. And I
suddenly remembered I was a Swahili-speaker who, in the eyes of the
Kinois these days, is worse than Lucifer: a Rwandan clone to be
expurged from the People's Republic of Kinshasa!
“All these irregularities have been noticed and condemned by church leaders, several national and international NGOs, among them the very credible Carter Center; but the runaway train of CENI dashes on without any care for its final destination.”
Once again, crisis struck at the top of UDPS organization this
Thursday, November 17--eleven days in the run-up to the general
elections. The head of UDPS "Commission Nationale de Discipline"--the
party's disciplinary commission--read a statement broadcast on TV and
radio announcing that Secretary General Jacquemain Shabani had just
been sanctioned for "gross misconduct" ("faute grave").
The discplinary commission alleged that Shabani failed to follow up on
the situation of jailed UDPS party members, stifled initiatives coming
from sections within the party, thwarted a crucial meeting between
MONUSCO and the youth wing of the party. Adding these acts of
indiscipline to the active obstruction of the commission's
investigation by Shabani amounted to "disrespecting" the person of the
party's chairman, Etienne Tshisekedi!
However, despite its strong wording, the statement didn't spell out
the actual consequences of this finding of "gross misconduct" on
Shabani's position and career within UDPS. Could Shabani still operate
as the party's secretary general? Has he been suspended or fired?
What's certain is that UDPS can't afford an abrupt estrangement with
one of its most vocal, articulate, media-savvy, and visible non-Luba
senior party officials for those flimsy reasons, when statistics being
thrown around by pro-Kabila campaigners purport to show that an
overwhelming majority of MP candidates on UDPS lists nationwide were
members of Tshisekedi's own Luba ethnic group.
This development, coming just days after Shabani urged CENI to
disqualify Kabila for using government resources and resources in his
reelection bid, left analysts and observers scratching their heads for
an explanation for such a suicidal move by a party whose chairman has
recently proved to be at best mercurial or at worst unhinged.
2) Kengo's official free campaign message aired
The CSAC (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel et de la
Communication)--the DRC media watchdog--started airing free campaign
messages by presidential and MP candidates. These messages are
simultaneously and mandatorily broadcast by more than 30 TV and radio
channels randomly selected.
Presidential candidate Léon Kengo wa Dondo's pre-recorded message was
aired on Thursday. Kengo said his main projects for the country are
twofold: "to push back poverty and to push back ignorance" (by heavily
investing in education).
In a quick reaction by phone to Kengo's message on pro-Kabila private
media channels, PPRD communication focal point, Emile Bongeli, said
that Kengo is among those politicians from the Mobutu regime "who
ought to just shut up," for their past abysmal records. Adding that as
a three-time most powerful Premier of Mobutu, Kengo actively
partcipated in the utter destruction of the country.
