evening to lash out at a damning Carter Center report intimating that
the elections were deeply flawed--though it stopped short of
questioning the overall results or the rankings of presidential
candidates as given by CENI. Seething with outrage, Rev Mulunda also
addressed a devastating comment made the same day by Kinshasa Cardinal
Laurent Mosengwo charging that the results published by CENI reflected
"neither truth nor justice." (Ealier in the day, as he was being cued
for a live interview with the Belgian RTBF, Mosengwo blurted
out--thinking he was still off-air--that Tshisekedi had won!)
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...
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