The AMP, the presidential majority cartel of political parties,
unveiled this week a project of constitutional amendment that would
change the 2-round mode of presidential election. The AMP official
talking point to explain the constitutional change is that two rounds
of election are onerous to be sustainable. But Radio-Trottoir claims
that this mode of dispatching things in the very first round is done
in order to avoid a scenario à la Côte d'Ivoire where Gbagbo, the
first-round winner, is now the loser in the second round.
The opposition, led by the President of the MLC Parliamentary Bloc, MP
François Mwamba, rejects flat out the project on the grounds that
rules are never changed in the middle of the game. Vital Kamerhe, the
ex-Speaker and now vocal critic of the regime, says that what the
"people of God" are witnessing in this project is "cheating" in
progress.
The new personality to join this "rejectionist" chorus is Cardinal
Laurent Monsengewo Pasinya who, at a press conference on Wednesday,
January 5, said:
"I only want to tell politicians to remember what's called the letter
of the law and the spirit of the law. The Constitution states that
there must be two rounds in the [presidential] election. If the
candidate wins in the first round, mathematically it means that he
would have won at most with 20% of the votes. This isn't
representative enough... How could you be satisfied being a president
with 20% out of a population of 100%? The president must have
sufficient support in the country, so that he may be recognized
everywhere. [That's why there's the requirement of] 50% + 1, hence
51%. The spirit of the law invites us to think hard on this issue and
to not rush things."
Well, AMP legislators are have read Montesquieu and, in their view,
Cardinal Monsengwo ain't Montesquieu. They first point to the
vitiated argument of the Cardinal by countering that the greatest
democracy on earth, the United States, has a one-round presidential
election--with the added flaw of an indirect suffrage by the Electoral
College. One of the AMP stalwarts even added that Al Gore won the
popular vote in 2000. Moreover, some other AMP stalwarts mock the
Cardinal's alarming ignorance of elementary arithmetic. As it happens,
50% + 1 vote doesn't equal 51%!
For its part Radio-Trottoir remembers that in the waning years of
Mobutu, Monsengwo's tenure as chairman of the National Sovereign
Conference (CNS) was fraught with suspicions of collaboration with the
dictator and the prelate's once publicly stated ambition of being one
day DRC's head of state! This question of the presidential ambition of
the prelate was in fact fired upon the Cardinal at the press
conference, which Mosengwo skirted with an incomprehensible pun.
Congolese prelates have historically had a rocky relationship with the
powers that be. The immediate predecessor of Monsengwo, Cardinal
Frédéric Etsau, after marrying the Raïs to First Lady Olive Lembe aka
Mère-Capable, wrote, a few weeks before his death in Europe, a much
publicized damning letter that read like a fatwa in which he accused
the Raïs and the international community of rigging the 2006
presidential election! Well, the man was a native of the opposition
stronghold of the Equateur Province and close to the Paris-based
radical opposition leader and erstwhile Mobutu's chief spy Honoré
Ngbanda aka Terminator aka Prophétator (he's now a preacher too), who
also hails from that western province.
And Etsau's predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Malula, a renowned
polygamist, went for some months in exile at The Vatican for opposing
the Zairian mercurial dictator's "African Authenticity" policy.
As for Cardinal Monsengwo, he'd already used his political capital
under Mobutu to be of any consequence to the regime... With a
comfortable majority in the National Assembly, the AMP will in all
likelihood soon vote into law the projected constitutional revision.
2) 71 Mobutu's ex-Presidential Guards arrested in Bas-Congo
In the days prior to this past Christmas, people in Tshela, a
southwestern small town about 360 km from Kin, began seeing suspicious
men who'd crossed the Congo River from neighboring Congo-Brazzaville.
The men moved briskly about in small groups and were often seen
hanging out at night by the river and scrutinizing movements on the
right bank of the river, Congo-Brazzaville's side.
Before long, the population tipped the local "securocrats" of the
Agence Nationale de Renseignements (ANR) who swiftly arrested at first
21 men. Upon interrogation (the methods employed at such sessions are
left to one's gory imagination), these men revealed the whereabouts of
the remaining 50 of their comrades.
It turns out that these men were members of Mobutu's Division Spéciale
Présidentielle (DSP) who at the fall of the Zairian strong man had
crossed into Congo-Brazzaville where they had helped Gen Denis Sassou
N'Guesso depose (with the help of the now defunct French state-owned
oil giant Elf) the democratically elected President Pascal Lissouba.
They have ever since been living large in Congo-Brazzaville under the
protection of N'Guesso. Their constant strolls along the river bank
was to await weapons that were to be shipped in pirogues from
Congo-Brazzaville.
Congo-Brazzaville has often been the originating point of armed
incursions into Congo-Kinshasa. The more recent such incursion was the
leadership of the Enyele insurgents in Dongo, through the Oubangi
River, in Equateur Province.
In announcing the arrest of the 71 DSP elements earlier this week,
Lambert Mende, DRC Communication Minister, warned that if Congolese
exiles want to return home with good intentions, they would be welcome
home with open arms. But if they intend to sow unrest, they'd be
promptly arrested and take the full brunt of the law. Mende didn't
however reveal where the men are now being held.
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