Electoral Campaign Kick-off

At midnight--in the night of Thursday, October 27, to Friday, October 28--the electoral campaign was officially launched by a CENi official. The electoral campaogn is to last one month, until November 26 at midnight--two days prior to the general elections.

Political ads and songs were immediately broadcast on TV and radio at precisely 0:00 HRS Kinshasa Time. First among presidential campaigns, Vital Kamerhe's campaigns had a long ad running on TV only moments after the official kick-off of the electoral campaign. On pro-Kabila TV channels a blue ticker featuring the picture of the Number 3 candidate and the slogan in Lingala and French "Na Raïs... 100% sûr" (With the Raïs we are 100% certain) began suddenly appearing either on the upper left or the bottom right of TV screens. To the credit of the government-owned RTNC channel, there are no political ads. The ads running thus far have no political messages--only sound tracks with songs or slogans praising candidates.

Kinois woke up in the morning to find thousands of political banners flying high across streets and thoroughfares, as hundreds of candidates are running for MPs in the four constituencies grouping the 24 communes of the city-province of Kinshasa.

A festive mood hang in the air, which many Kinois hope would prevail throughout the electoral campaign (hough the Congolese diaspora media outlet "Kongo Times" relayed the crazy rumor of a bomb scare in the Congolese capital!)...

I met a Kinois who was unimpressed by all the campaign hullabaloo. "I'm not going to vote," he told me. "It's a terrible nightmare the Congolese are born into. The country is dead, destroyed! And make no mistake: Kabila, Tshitshi, Kamerhe... No one among those comedians and jokers will ever kick this place back to life. We're dead people walking!"

Most candidates has any published schedule of public appearances, with the exception of Léon Kengo wa Dondo who will unveil his political project on Saturday, October 29.

The CSAC, the media watchdog, has issued a schedule of taping of presidential candidates' political messages to be aired once on RTNC during the electoral campaign... Another joke apparently...