1) Government Okays bill of Annex to Electoral Law
Professor Adolphe Lumanu
Deputy Premier and Interior Minister
Saturday July 30. A two-hour “extraordinary cabinet meeting” was convened at the Cité de l’Union Africaine, in Ngaliema Commune, by Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito to discuss two bills to be sent to Parliament: a) the bill on the Annex to the Electoral Law introduced by Deputy Premier and Interior minister Adolphe Lumanu, submitted to him the previous day by CENI president Adolphe Mulunda; and b) the bill on the Special Court on Human Rights.
Both bills were okayed by the cabinet meeting.
But the bill on the Annex to the Electoral Law passed by the Parliament in June is time-sensitive, considering that Rev Mulunda has set a deadline of August 10 for its vote and enactment. The Parliament is in recess till August 15, and no one knows if and when both chambers would convene in an extraordinary session before that date. But given the speed at which the bill was approved by the cabinet meeting, observers anticipate that a parliamentary "extraordinary session" is imminent.
2) Lubumbashi: UDPS headquarters vandalized by Gabriël Kyungu’s UNAFEC
A vehicle with smashed windshield in front of UDPS headquarters
Lubumbashi, Monday, August 1, 2011
Photo: Jean Ngandu/Radio Okapi
Monday August 1. The Lubumbashi headquarters of Etienne Tshisekedi’s UDPS was vandalized by the youth wing of Antoine Gabriël Kyungu wa Kumwanza’s Union Nationale des Démocrates Fédéralistes du Congo (UNAFEC), a member of the ruling MP cartel.
According to UDPS witnesses, the incident took place at around 5 PM local time when Kyungu’s motorcade drove on Avenue Kasavubu and members of UNAFEC started throwing stones at UPDS headquarters. A melee ensued, during which windows of UDPS provincial office and vehicles parked nearby were smashed.
UNAFEC Secretary General called the incident a provocation by a UDPS member who was attempting to block with his vehicle Kyungu’s motorcade.
He gave the following brazen account of the donnybrook:
“Asked to move his car out of the way of the motorcade, this driver didn’t obey. An argument ensued between UNAFEC members, who were part of the motorcade, and this driver. Irritated, the youth of UNAFEC set upon the driver whom they beat up, damaging his vehicle. And as the scene was happening next to UDPS headquarters, members of this party started throwing stones at the motorcade of the president of UNAFEC. A stone throwing between the two sides followed.”
Kyungu, a governor of Katanga under Mobutu, was accused of having engineered in the early 1990s, with the complicity of the Zairian dictator, a campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting the Lubas, Tshisekedi’s ethnic group, in the Katanga.
Kyungu is currently the speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Katanga. On January 28, 2010, his party members mugged, right in front of the provincial assembly building, two assemblymen who had introduced a procedural motion “to compel the Speaker to put up for debate [a] motion against the treasurer of the parliament, who happens to be Gabriel Kyungu's ally.”
A few days before the recent visit of UDPS president in Lubumbashi, Kyunga told the media: “[Thisekedi] is a native son of this country, one can’t prevent him from coming to Lubumbashi. He has his brothers who will welcome him.” The reference to Tshisekedi’s “brothers” was interpreted by his critics as an allusion to the Lubas living in the Katanga.
In the meantime, Tshisekedi is pursuing his visits in the interior of Katanga. He’s scheduled to return to Kin on August 8.
Antoine Gabriël Kyungu wa Kumwanza
Speaker
Katanga Provincial Assembly
3) Pro-Kabila MP and media owner Pius Muabilu in the crosshairs of own party
MP Pius Muabilu
Owner of media group RTGA
Tuesday August 2. MP Pius Muabilu is a card-carrying member of the Parti du Peuple pour la Reconstruction et le Développement (PPRD), Joseph Kabila’s party. He owns the media group Radio Télévision du Groupe L’Avenir (RTGA), which also publishes one of Kinshasa main dailies, L’Avenir. His newspaper and his radio and television stations count among the mouthpieces of Kabila. Muabilu’s television station had the impudence of accepting payment to carry out live the opening of Vital Kamerhe’s UNC congress on July 28. For die-hard Kabila’s sycophants, this was an unforgivable act. And some of those "Kabilistes" are now allegedly advocating “neutralizing” Muabilu, by cutting off the signal of his television station, which, in their view, is now to be classified among “enemy channels.”
In a stinging editorial, L’Avenir attacked these unnamed backstabbing "friends" within the PPRD who think they are “co-managers of the presidency.”
The editorial started out by stating the obvious fact that RTGA is a “private commercial channel” and then went on to add that:
“RTGA is funded by no one else but its founder. Its editorial line is determined by its owner in accordance with the well understood interests of the country and of the Congolese left to which it belongs (…) Those individuals who claim the monopoly of loyalty to the Head of State, can they say that the PPRD funds [RTGA]?”
4) Catherine Ashton: EU Election Observation Mission (EOM) to Congo elections
Catherine Ashton
Photo: EC/EU
August 2. The office of Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, issued the following press release:
“Brussels, 02 August 2011 The European Union is to send an election observation mission (EOM) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on 28 November 2011. The mission will be deployed six to eight weeks before the polls and will be led by Ms. Mariya Nedelcheva, Member of the European Parliament. "At the invitation of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I have decided to send an election observation mission for the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on 28 November 2011 and to appoint Ms. Mariya Nedelcheva, Member of the European Parliament, as Chief Observer to lead the mission. This decision forms part of the European Union's continuing political support for the democratic process and comes on top of financial support amounting to EUR 47.5 million for the elections", said Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice‑President of the Commission.”
5) Azarias Ruberwa: Postpone elections to February 2012
Azarias Ruberwa and Paul Kagame
Tuesday August 2. Azarias Ruberwa, former warlord and transitional DRC Vice-President, held a press briefing in Kinshasa to mark the 13th anniversary of his party, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD).
At that press briefing, Ruberwa advocated the postponement of general elections to February 2012. “We realize,” he said, “that there’s a big delay as regards some [CENI] operations… The filing of candidacies starting on August 4 as CENI requires is impossible because it has just submitted the annexes to the electoral law… If CENI is keen on organizing elections according to its schedule, consequences would be negative.”
This seems to be the refrain of many opposition political parties that are certain to lose against the incumbent if elections were held on November 28, as projected. Without a unified front, a Kabila’s win is almost a foregone conclusion. The hope of the opposition is to delay the elections beyond the constitutional limit of the incumbent government and legislature. This would then open the door for yet another option for a “transitional government,” an option clearly contemplated by François-Xavier Beltchika Kalubye, president of the UDPS breakaway Congrès des Démocrates pour le Progrès Social (CDPS), who recently intimated that there was an urgent need “to agree on the nature and the form of the appropriate institutional organization during the period that would run beyond the expiration of the current legislature.” An unconstitutional way to circumvent elections and against which major political parties within the ruling majority are opposed.
Incidentally, the problem with the anniversary of the RCD, a military outfit now turned into a political party, is that August 2 is also the anniversary of the invasion of the Congo by Rwanda and Uganda (erstwhile allies of Ruberwa) on 2 August 1998. As Ruberwa was celebrating the anniversary of his party, some Kinois held rallies billed as “duty of memory.”
Azarias Ruberwa
President of RCD
At his press briefing
Kinshasa, Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
6) New Website of Note: “Gouvernance pour Tous,”a Congolese civil society portal
Web portal Gouvernance pour Tous
Screen copy: Alex Engwete
I just added today a new website of note to my blogroll: “Gouvernance pour Tous” [Governance for all]. According to one consultant who’s helping set up the website, the portal is “a US government supported democracy promotion program.” It is a handy tool, she added, that “civil society organizations can consult in order to be in a better position to advocate effectively on pending legislation, on budget issues, revenue transparency, policies, etc. The website is based on the principle that the more and sooner you have information on issues, the better you can be in a position to influence them. And so we have a staff that is now initiating the process of developing a system for collecting information, especially on pending legislative and government actions.”
Though still under construction, “Gouvernance pour Tous” has already that sexy look of great portals, including invaluable contents, resources, and links. Gouvernance pour Tous strives to emulate megaportals such as OpenCongress, govtrack.us or washingtonwatch. It will also host blogs by civil society members. If anything, this is a major contribution by the US government into sustaining the fledgling Congolese civil society.
The website project is funded by USAID, in partnership with DAI, CENADEP, and the Congolese civil society.
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