Riot cops nab a UDPS "combatant."
Kinshasa, July 4, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
The rushed calendar of the presidential and parliamentarian elections published on April 29 by the DRC Commission Nationale ElectoraleIndépendante (CENI)—the Independent National Electoral Commission—seems, to many observers, to be fraught with perils that could see the tentative post-conflict setting unravel and the country spiral down yet again into turmoil and war.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), for instance, in its Africa Report No. 175 released May 5, conjectures that the poor planning and precipitation in the organization and calendar of the upcoming general elections could mire the country into what it calls a “catch-22 situation”: “The Congolese authorities face a dilemma: respect the constitutional deadline and organise botched elections, or ignore that deadline and slide into a situation of unconstitutional power.”
The only way for disentangling the dilemma, the ICG report speculates, would be “to both speed up preparations and negotiate a contingency electoral calendar and political agreement to manage an almost certainly necessary transition period” (my emphasis).
I was in Kinshasa when this report came out, and the “institutional” political class in its vast majority—both in the ruling coalition now called M.P. (Majorité Présidentielle) and within the opposition—wholeheartedly rejected the report’s call for a “transition period.” The “institutional” political class members are those who’ve been participating in the democratic process since 2003 and the electoral process of 2005-2006. That is, shrewd politicians and war profiteers who’d made hay while the sun shone, as it were.
The only glaring exception to this universal rejection was the sempiternal opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi aka Lider Maximo aka Tshitshi aka Le Sphinx de Limete (Limete is the Kinshasa neighborhood where he resides), 79, who had previously taken out of the democratic process his party—the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UDPS)—deeming both the constitutional referendum of 2005 and the general elections of 2006 farcical exercises concocted by the international community to maintain in power its puppet—the Raïs—who’d then give free rein to Western powers to continue plundering the country.
This voluntary sidelining of then big nation-wide party as the UDPS had serious tangible consequences from which still reel Tshisekedi and his party—chief among them, Tshisekedi’s own personal irrelevance and his party’s dwindling influence in the cutthroat gamesmanship of Congolese politics. The political irrelevance of the UDPS benefited Jean-Pierre Bemba’s party—the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC)—which became by default the flag bearer of the “institutional opposition,” though of late the MLC itself seems to be imploding…
No wonder then that Tshisekedi was about the only Congolese politician who jumped with both feet into the chasm opened by the ICG with its call for a new “transition period.”
Etienne Tshisekedi may have realized that his ill-conceived stance in the 2005 and 2006 electoral cycle was a de facto political suicide. Backpedaling, he’s now segued into the very “farcical exercises” he’d shunned 5 years ago.
The major problem for Tshisekedi now, is that there are new political configurations and alliances in the political landscape, as well as a seemingly unstoppable “spontaneous generation” of dozens of new parties coupled with the emergence of new ambitious younger leaders—such as Vital Kamerhe, the erstwhile National Assembly speaker.
What’s more, having failed to unite all the opposition leaders behind his presidential bid, Tshisekedi has apparently decided to fall back to his old gig: to discredit the whole process. With however this crucial modulation this time around: a two-pronged assault upon the Independent National Independent Electoral Commission consisting in: 1) questioning its independence by painting it as a tool of the Raïs; and 2) blackmailing it with ultimatums accompanied by urban mass demonstrations.
But the argument underpinning the first part of Tshisekedi’s plan doesn’t hold water and the tactics of mass civil urban disobedience and disturbance might backfire in a city that had witnessed violent electoral confrontations in 2006 with a death toll of more than 600 civilian victims.
1) The CENI as a political instrument of the Raïs.
During his June European tour, Etienne Tshisekedi did by all means score some points. His requests to be received at the Elysée Palace in Paris by Sarkozy’s African affairs advisor and in London by the UK Minister for Africa were both granted.
Tshisekedi took the advantage of his European trip to open the first salvo of his attacks against the CENI.
In a June 14 telephone interview with Christophe Boisbouvier of Radio France Internationale (RFI), Tshisekedi explained his European tour by the fact the he was “convinced that those who are organizing the elections are hell-bent on staying in power and by all means necessary, including by means of fraud” and that’s why he was visiting “the international community to have it put pressure [on Congolese institutions], so that organizers of these elections carry them out in a transparent, credible fashion.”
This statement is bizarre, to say the least, especially as it comes from a man who is wont to demonize the “international community” in his fiery speeches to his followers. It was the
Prodded further by Boisbouvier to give his assessment of CENI and its president, Reverend Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, Tshisekedi had this to say:
“Mr. Ngoy Mulunda, he’s not only a close relative of Mr. Kabila, but he’s also the cofounder of the PPRD, the party of Kabila. How do you want such a man to be impartial and objective in his work?”
This is a lame attempt at discrediting the CENI as an institution rigged by Kabila and the results of the elections as already foregone.
The truth of the matter is that the law setting up the CENI and the make-up of its 7 members (4 from the ruling majority and 3 from the opposition) was debated, voted in the lower chamber, voted and confirmed by the senate, and then signed into law by the President. The selection of the 7 members was a long, drawn-out war of trenches pitting the ruling majority against the opposition. The vetting process was often acrimonious, grueling, and merciless in the raucous hemicycle of the National Assembly. And if the UDPS didn’t participate in the debate and vote in Parliament, Tshisekedi has himself to blame for pulling out his party from the whole process in 2005-2006. The UDPS faces today the bleak predicament of having no elected representatives in both houses of Parliament.
Here’s the list of the 7 CENI members voted by Parliament:
President: Reverend Daniel Ngoy Mulunda Nyanga (Majority);
Vice-President: Professor Jacques Ndjoli Eseng’Ekeli (Opposition) ;
Rapporteur: Mathieu Mpita Pintho Tomadia (Majority);
1st Deputy Rapporteur: Laurent Ndaye Nkondo Mulekelay (Opposition) ;
2nd Deputy Rapporteur: Flavien Misoni Mbayahe (Majority);
Questor: Ms. Carole Kabanga Koy (Opposition);
Deputy Questor: Ms. Elise Muhimuzi Kinja (Majority).
Now, the Vice-President of CENI, Jacques Ndjoli Eseng’Ekeli, until his designation at the CENI a few months ago was a senator of Jean-Pierre Bemba’s party MLC. A university professor of constitutional law, he hails from the Equateur Province and can’t be accused of being a Kabila stooge. There's no way he'd sign into anything that would smack of fraud or rigging by the ruling majority. The CENI, in my view, is balanced and its independence is by all means robust. And by attacking the credibility of the CENI, Tshisekedi is in fact insulting the integrity of people of the stature of Professor Jacques Ndjoli.
The only credible attack that Tshisekedi could level at the process is the fact that government resources—like the national broadcast system—are being diverted by the ruling majority to its propaganda.
2) Blackmailing the CENI with ultimatums and mass protests.
On Monday, July 4, Jacquemain Shabani Lukoo, UDPS secretary general, went to submit a “memo” denouncing alleged “irregularities” in the enrolment into national electoral rosters at the headquarters of the CENI on Boulevard du 30 Juin, in downtown Kinshasa. He was accompanied by a mob of “combatants,” as UDPS members call themselves. This led inevitably to a confrontation with the riot police, though Jacquemain Shabani himself was unscathed and was able to get his memo to CENI officials.
The UDPS “memo” contains two parts: 1) “Irregularities”; and 2) “Remedies.” Among the irregularities listed are the following points, most on them intangible: opacity in the process of enrolment; negative influence on the CENI by politicians; enrolment of minors, cops, and soldiers; issuance of electors' cards without 2 fingerprints showing on the card; inequitable enrolment periods between Kinshasa and the provinces; sudden and unexplained demographic jumps in Goma and Nyiragongo territory (here the “memo” refers to bibliographic evidence going as far back as 1987—yet another attempt at showing that Rwanda is pumping its excess population into the Congo, thus reinforcing Kabila's constituency by the same token); failure to utilize indelible ink at enrolment, etc…
If taken seriously, the UDPS memo would not only paralyze the whole process but also ensure that the idea of a long “transition period” be taken seriously.
The “remedies” proposed by UDPS are stern and unmitigable as well: publication on the website of CENI and in all major Congolese papers of all the enrolment rosters; access to CENI central server and access to its source code application; access to source code of data treatment programs of enrolment and vote results; etc., etc…
The rambling memo ends with this ominous threat: “In the event that this situation should continue at the risk of favoring the confiscation of the political process by a political group, the UDPS and all the forces of change would not hesitate one single moment to use their constitutional right to prevent an electoral hold-up by having recourse to Article 64 of the Constitution.”
Again, the irony here is that in 2005 the UDPS had rejected the very Constitution its Secretary General Jacquemain Shabani Lukoo is referring to in his “memo” to the CENI.
Now, Article 64 of the DRC Constitution could be interpreted as a call to open rebellion against the government, for it stipulates:
“All Congolese have the duty to oppose any individual or group of individuals who seize power by force or who exercise it in violation of the provisions of this Constitution.Any attempt to overthrow the constitutional regime constitutes an offense against the nation and the State, an offense which is not subject to the statute of limitations. It is punished in accordance with the law.”
Does the UDPS seriously think that an individual or a group of individuals have staged a coup in the Congo? Is the UDPS the only political party that sees this coup taking place in the country? Would Ambassador Roger Meece, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Head of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), be so blind to the coup d’état transpiring in Kinshasa that he’d be satisfied with the enrolment process and go as far as to reiterate the UN support of the process, this past Friday, during a visit to the CENI offices in Bandundu, by stating: “Our role, at Monusco and at UNDP, is to extend our support to the CENI”?
Well, the UDPS doesn’t care about facts or the constitutionality of its actions. Devoid of any political programs, much as most Congolese parties, shrunk to its core Luba tribal base, the UDPS has only one option left: urban guerilla of mass protests to torpedo the electoral process. This started on July 4, and resulted that day in one dead among UDPS “combatants.” It was repeated on July 8, when UDPS demonstrators showed up with the body of their deceased fellow “combatant,” again in front of the CENI headquarters. As usual, riot cops tear-gassed them and fired in the air to disperse the crowd. The police also confiscated the casket of the dead UDPS member...
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