The Congolese official news agency ACP reports that on Tuesday the
residence of Acting Speaker of the National Assembly Timothée Kombo
Nkisi at Madimba (Lukaya District; Bas-Congo Province) was vandalized
and thoroughly ransacked by "inciviques," that is, citizens devoid of
any sense of civic duty! (That adjective used as noun is part of DRC
political lingo. It's a catch-all term to describe all forms of
antisocial behavior and political dissent--from corruption to
"Mai-Mai" militia activities in the Kivus. On this blog, I use the
term "doppelganger anticitizens" coined by Jean Comaroff and John
Comaroff and used in another context, i.e. South Africa.)
In this instance, the "inciviques" in question are undoubtedly UDPS
members from Nkisi's constituency, angered by the latter's
participation in the new National Assembly. Last week, Tshisekedi had
expelled Nkisi from UDPS for "indiscipline."
2) 26 UDPS MPs break ranks with leadership
While Tshisekedi and UDPS members of Madimba were busy respectively
expelling Acting Speaker Timothée Kombo Nkisi from the party and
ransacking his house, at least 26 among the 42 newly elected UDPS MPs
have broken ranks with their leadership by sitting in the hemicycle of
the National Assembly.
These 26 renegades are now in the crosshairs of Tshisekedi who,
incidentally, has been given another telling moniker by
Radio-Trottoir: "Saint-Père" (Holy Father).
Well, Saint-Père should prepare himself to fire the whole batch of 42
elected MPs--or rather 40, if we take out from the list his sister and
his son. A daughter of one of those newly elected UDPS MPs recently
told one of her friends: "Dad borrowed $20,000 for his political
campaign. Would Saint-Père pay dad's loan sharks?"
In the event, cool-headedness has never prevailed in Saint-Père's
entourage. One of the scatterbrains around Saint-Père recently told
reporter Papy Maluku of the Kinshasa daily L'Avenir: "Any deputy
elected under [UDPS] banner who'd validate his [or her] mandate will
be expelled. It's not the departure of 42 deputies that would shake a
party that is 30 years old."
At age 30 UDPS is instead displaying all the egregious symptoms of
infantilism that could cripple a political party--including the most
insane personality cult: for instance, party members now wear
driver's tweed caps because Saint-Père dons one!
3) National Assembly: 11 validation commissions
Impervious to the internal woes and pangs of his former political
party and the ransacking of his home residence, Acting Speaker of the
National Assembly Timothée Kombo Nkisi is diligently working to
achieve the constitutional duties tasked to him.
One of those duties included overseeing on Monday the setting up of
the 11 commissions whose objective was to validate (within 5 days from
Monday) the elected MPs. (The leadership of those commissions was
designated according to the same constitutional rule that propelled
Nkisi at the helm of the new National Assembly: each commission is
chaired by the most senior MP belonging to it while the most junior MP
is appointed its Rapporteur.)
As the elected MPs of a specific province can't possibly work on their
own validation dossiers, the following binary combinations for the 11
provinces have been devised: 1) MPs from Bandundu work on validation
for Oriental Kasai; 2) Bas-Congo for Maniema; 3) Equateur for
South-Kivu; 4) Katanga for Equateur; 5) Occidental Kasai for
North-Kivu; 6) Oriental Kasai for Orientale; 7) Kinshasa for Katanga;
8) Maniema for Bandundu; 9) North-Kivu for Kinshasa; 10) South-Kivu
for Bas- Congo; and 11) Orientale for Occidental Kasai.
Acting Speaker Nkisi remains concerned, however, by the truancy that
plagues the new lower house, discounting the boycott by die-hard UDPS
MPs.
At the extraordinary session of Thursday, February 16, there were 350
MPs in attendance. By Monday, that number had dropped to 300. The full
house counts 500 MPs.
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