"Trivialization and Cretinization of American politics"

Forget all about the Mayan Calendar coming to a screeching halt on
December 21 of this year; on which day--New Age shamans and
survivalists and astrophysics buffs and crooks warn us--a perfect
galactic alignment will trigger doomsday events worldwide: End of
Times! Rapture!

What gives me the heebie-jeebies these days is the "trivialization and
cretinization of American politics"--to use The New YorKer Jon
Cassidy's phrase-- which is likely to give the world a faineant
Planetarch name of Mitt Romney, who itches to nuke Iran to smithereens
as a teaser for his presidency.

I won't be ranting today about Romney--though he's the opening by
which this rant is ushered in.

I could also have ranted about Ralph Nader, a wackjob who's still
suing Dems and other political groups for conspiring to keep him off
the ballot in several places in his doomed 2004 presidential bid!
(Where's the outrage of those Americans preaching lessons on democracy
to the Congolese?)...

Or about American cannibal soldiers in Afghanistan. (Well, American
soldiers didn't invent the ritual: African and First Nations' warriors
in the Americas and fierce cannibal fighters of South Pacific used
captured enemies for open pit barbecues.)

Or even about the fact that the political campaign has literally gone
to the dogs, as The Christian Science Monitor quips today. (George
Carlin would have queried the Monitor: "Where are those dogs? How many
are they?") If Mitt Romney had his dog Seamus strapped in a crate on
the roof of one of his cadillacs speeding Candada-bound on the
motorway; we're now being forced to conjure up the nauseous image of
Obama munching dog meat hamburgers as a kiddie growing up in
Indonesia. (Why Obama puts that detail of a deviant culinary custom in
his autobiography beats me!)

A complete cretinization indeed. But when THE planet's superpower is
so thoroughly cretinized, it's the rest of the world that will end up
bearing the brunt any time the giant idiot staggers about!

But I wanted to specifically rant on one of the strangest event of the
recent string of trivializations and cretinizations on the American
political scape: GOPers bashing of MSNBC Martin Bashir for demanding
that Mitt Romney stand by the stark tenet of his Mormon religion--or
any other religion for that matter--on TRUTH, as taught in the "Book
of Mormon." (Bashir caught Romney lying at least on 3 specific
occasions in the past few days; including one instance where the GOP
candidate claimed that Obama had said he'd keep unemployment under 8%
throughout his presidency.)

(The funniest thing about the whole hoo-haa is that one GOPer blogger
was furious that Bashir--a "Muslim," according to him--should be
quoting from Christian holy books. A cretin to boot! Bashir is
actually Christian. He wouldn't otherwise have been named Martin by
his Pakistani parents.)

With his typical British biting sarcasm--small wonder that watching
the video, I was reminded of the late Christospher Hitchens--Bashir
referred to the GOPer candidate as "Mitt the Mendacious."

Said Bashir: "It doesn't matter how many times he hears the truth,
Mitt Romney prefers to tell lies!"

Adding:

"In Section 63, in verse 17 of the Doctrine and Covenants of the
Mormon Church we find this: 'All liars, and whosoever loveth and and
maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their
part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the
second death'... And from the Book of Mormon to Nephi, Chapter 2,
Verse 34 we find this: 'Woe unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down
to hell.'

"Given what the Book of Mormon is clearly saying, Mr. Romney has but
two choices... He can either keep lying and potentially win the White
House, but bring eternal damnation upon himself or he can start
telling the truth. The question for him, I guess, is which is more
important."

Wow!

I saw something eerie looming behind the funny and impressive
rherotical exercise performed by Bashir: the fundamental lie,
artificiality, and fabrication at the root of all religions and
theologies. How would a sane and rational mind take seriously the crap
contained in the Book of Mormon or any other such mythologies?

Let me take this a step further then, for I'm always pissed when run
into pairs of Congolese Mormon missionaries in the streets of
Kinshasa--oh yeah, LSD has mega-temples in the Congolese capital! Do
these Congolese zombies really know what the Mormon sacred texts say
about the curse of black skin--not the watered-down revisionist
exegeses of the originals?

I'm not going to give an anthology of racist quotes scattered in the
Book of Mormon or LSD's other crazy texts. Two excerpts lifted from
the website of other nut jobs called Christian Defense, who go to
great lengths to denigrate Mormons in order to prove they are the ones
genuinely interfacing with God, would suffice here:

1) From the Book of Mormon:

"And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which
was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of
their transgression and their rebellion" (Alma 3:6)

2) From Bringham Young's Journal of Discourses:

"But let them apostatize, and they will become gray-haired, wrinkled,
and black, just like the Devil" (Vol. 5, p. 332).

In an ideal world, Romney's religion should most definitely NOT be out
of bound in a political campaign. And those Congolese joining LSD are
out of their mind!

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Kabila jumpstarts second term with appointment of Premier Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon

By appointing as prime minister Augustin Matata Poyo Mapon, who turns
48 in June, President Joseph Kabila signals a double clean break: 1)
firstly, a generational break; and 2) secondly, a break with Congolese
politics as usual. 3) But more important, Kabila has arguably
jumpstarted his last presidential term in a dramatic fashion.

1) In the run-up to the appointment of the new prime minister, pundits
of all stripes, who speculated about the profile and even provided a
bevy of names of those that stood a chance of being appointed as
premier, didn't even once mention the name of the "respected financial
expert" (BBC) who was appointed yesterday as prime minister.

Matata Ponyo was completely under the radar.

Two weeks ago, when I mentioned Matata's name as a possible prime
minister to one of those talking heads, he laughed out loud, and
condescendingly dismissed my suggestion out of hand.

The pundit argued that Matata may be suffering from post-concussion
syndrome. As a matter-of-fact, according to contemporaneous media
reports, Matata had sustained severe cranial injuries in the deadly
plane crash of mid-February at Kavumu Airport in Bukavu. Reports that
turned out to be false after all, when he promptly returned from South
Africa, where he was flown for treatment, to resume his duties.

The pundit then went on to give me a list of names of those he thought
would likely be appointed to premiership: a lineup of the usual
suspects--all of whom born before 1960, the year of the country's
independence.

Admittedly the appointment of Matata Ponyo is therefore significant
since it represents a generational break.

2) In dismissing my suggestion, the same pundit also said that Matata
Ponyo had four additional disadvantages:

a) He was from Maniema, an "insignificant province." A strange
assessment indeed, coming from a seasoned political analyst no less.
(That tiny and sparsely populated province wields a lot of influence
since both the mothers of the First Lady and of the Prez hail from
Maniema.) This is what is called "geopolitics" in Congolese political
parlance: a quota system whereby political appointments are
necessarily made according to provincial, regional, or ethnic balance;

b) Though a card-carrying member of Kabila's PPRD, Matata isn't a
diehard seasoned political operative (he didn't even run for a seat in
the National Assembly), focussing instead mostly on his financial and
budgetary expertise as well as his academic pursuits (he's also an
assistant professor of economics at the Université de Kinshasa);

c) Kabila would want to share the spoils of his re-election with other
political parties making up the Presidential Majority (acronymed "MP"
in French).

As the Presidential Majority was pegging another PPRD member on the
slot of the National Assembly's speakership (Aubin Minaku), it would
"logically" follow that the prime minister should come from another
party in that alliance--and this, according to the strength of that
party in Parliament. Thus, still according to the same pundit, the
prime minister had therefore to come from the party "Mouvement Social
pour le Renouveau" (MSR)--the second strongest party of the
Presidential Majority in the National Assembly, after the PPRD; and,
last and not least,

d) Matata Ponyo is charisma-challenged and at times comes across as
outright shy. Now, according to this line of reasoning, the prime
minister ought to be infused with enough personal charisma in order to
be able to corral the fractious, contentious, and ego-boosted
politicians in the National Assembly and the Congolese at large so as
to carry out any meaningful change in a country where anything is a
priority, or to make a dent in the well-entrenched prevalent Mobutuist
neoclientelism.

This pundit has obviously not taken the full measure of Matata Ponyo
who, in his 2-year tenure as finance minister, has obtained
achievements measurable by positive metrics where others had pitifully
failed.

According to his BBC profile drawn hours after his appointment as
prime minister, Matata Ponyo is "credited with stabilising the
country's economy" and "ran a $12bn debt reduction agreement with
international creditors, which was seen as the main achievement of
President Kabila's first term in office."

If anything, this took brass cojones, tough leadership and personal
charisma--particularly as Matata's boss, erstwhile Premier Adolphe
Muzito, was a spendthrift who has recently even been accused of
massive theft.

Maybe this pundit is even unaware of Matata's Branhamism faith--the
only flaw I see in the man--which makes his doggedness borders on
abrasiveness and outright lack of humor. Item: Two years ago, shortly
after Matata was appointed finance minister, soukouss star Papa Wemba
made the mistake of praising him in one song of his then freshly
released album "Notre Père" (Congolese musicians often pull this kind
of stunt with most public figures in the hope of getting money).

Instead of basking in that praise, Matata threatened to drag Papa
Wemba to court if he didn't go back to the recording studio and remove
his good name from that "filthy" song! Matata is alleged to have only
calmed down after his contrite son confessed he was the one who'd
talked Papa Wemba into tossing his dad's name into the song...

3) Congo bashers often accuse Kabila of lacking political will; and
DRC observers speculale that he runs a parallel government--what Jason
Stearns calls the "concentric circles of power" radiating from the
Prez, then the second circle from his immediate family and entourage,
and so on; each one of those rings generating its own concentric
circles!

Well, maybe by having this once the moxie of appointing a non-nonsense
man of the ilk of Matata as his prime minister, Kabila could be
telegraphing to his cumbersome entourage he's jumpstarting his
presidency, as I said. He could have reasoned that if Matata could
pull what he did right under the nose of a kleptocrat like former
Premier Muzito, maybe--just maybe!--the guy could also scramble and
even smash the marbles of those Stearnsian concentric circles.

Incidentally, critics of Kabila--including the US Embassy in a cable
leaked by Wikileaks --claimed that the late Augustin Katumba Mwanke,
who uncannily died in February in the crash of the aircraft aboard
which Matata was also a passenger, was the "éminence grise" of Kabila.

Uncannily, Mwanke's untimely demise at the threshold of Kabila's
second term might turn out to be quite auspicious for the
Prez--unleashing the president's political renewal and inventiveness.

Some people think there seems to be a sea change happening deep in
Kabila's psyche: an obsession with his legacy. They claim you could
even pinpoint with some accuracy when this change started to be
perceptible. By July 2010, Kinois--usually cynical--who've picked up
on those vibes, had given him the Kikongo language moniker of
"sisa-bidimbu": one who leaves symbols in her wake!

If by appointing Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon as prime minister is all
about leaving an enduring legacy behind, then many kudos to Kabila for
appointing him as prime minister--and Godspeed!

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Kabila promotes Finance Minister AUGUSTIN MATATA PONYO to Premiership

Kabila couldn't have chosen a better time to announce the promotion of
current Finance Minister Augustin Matata Mponyo to premiership in the
evening of this Wednesday, August 18: during the half-time of the
Champions League semi-final match pitting Barcelona against Chelsea; a
match that was being relayed live on government-owned TV channel
"RTNC" (as of this writing, the match was still being played at
Stanford Bridge stadium in London).

Prime Minister Matata survived almost unscathed the plane crash in
which Augustin Katumba Mwanke died this past February.

A brilliant move by Kabila to appoint at the helm of his government
such a brilliant technocrat.

Matata is a native of Maniema Province.

More comment on this appointment in the next post as I'm still
watching the football match.

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Radio-Trottoir Feed: Kabila about to appoint GEORGES BUSE as Prime Minister

According to Kinshasa grapevine of Radio-Trottoir, Joseph Kabila is
about to appoint Georges Buse, sixtiish, as prime minister.

Geoges Buse was the chief of staff of Laurent Kabila, the assassinated
former president and father of the incumbent.

Buse, aged between 65-68, is from a prominent family of Kisangani, the
provincial capital of Orientale Province.

Two of Buse's young brothers achieved national notoriety in their own right:

1) One was the the auxiliary bishop of the Catholic diocese of
Kisangani. It's rumored he didn't make to full bishop because he's a
womanizer who's fathered a number of kids. A bizarre pitfall in a
country where virtually every single Catholic priest or prelate has a
common-law wife with kids. The late Cardinal Malula was a polygamist
with children. And credible Congolese Catholic sources claim that
Kinshasa Laurent Cardinal Mosengwo Pasinya carried out relationships
with his nieces that can only be described as sexual or emotional
affairs; and

2) Jean-Pierre "JP" Buse, a singer of the soukous band "Zaiko." JP has
since moved to Canada where he's a born-again evangelical preacher.

Georges Buse is an engineer who had a successful career as a
procurement officer of the Congolese mining giant "Gecamines" in
Kolwezi and Lubumbashi, in the Katanga Province, before being
appointed chief of staff of Laurent Kabila.

It's rumored Buse got appointed presidential chief of staff on the
sole merit that he was married to the late president's niece.

It's also alleged that Georges Buse, who until a few days ago worked
in South Africa as a consultant has since been recalled to Kinshasa in
anticipation of the nomination.

Astonishingly, this rumor has put a damper on Orientale Province
natives' mood. I spoke to several of them in the past two weeks in
Kinshasa.

They point out that Buse, having had his career in Katanga, is more of
a Katangan than a native from Orientale Province. His wife, as I just
mentioned, is from the Katangan presidential family. Besides, last
time he was in charge as Laurent Kabila's chief of staff, he did very
little to favor other natives of Orientale Province; at times even
vetoing their appointments.

According to conventional wisdom, if this rumor turns out to be true,
then Kabila, uncharacterically, has gone back to his father's
entourage to find a seasoned skipper to steer him through the rough
seas of his second presidential term. A huge disappointment. People
were expecting him to show cojones by appointing someone totally new.
The appointment of Buse would instead evince Kabila's lack of
political imagination and creativity.
Creativity and imagination would have entailed appointing a WOMAN as
prime minister for a change!

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Election of Permanent Bureau: Pandemonium at National Assembly

Pandemonium broke out today at the National Assembly after the
incidental motion introduced by rabble-rouser MLC MP Jean-Lucien Busa.
Busa made his motion about a half-hour after the opening of the
plenary session 14:09 Kinshasa Time (GMT + 1)--subsequent to the
adoption of the day's agenda and quorum call (423 MPs were present).

Today's session had in its main agenda the election of the permanent
bureau of the National Assembly.

Busa's incidental motion questioned the candidacies to the 2 posts
earmarked for the opposition by some MPs who, according to him,
weren't lined up by the opposition--including Acting Speaker Timothée
Kombo Nkisi, elected on UDPS list, and Jean-Pierre Tshimanga of the
party "Alliance pour le Développement et la République" (ADR),
respectively vying for the positions of Second Vice-President and
Deputy Rapporteur. MP Busa didn't even consider ADR--created by the
erstwhile secretary general of MLC, MP François Mwamba Tshishimbi--to
be part of the opposition. Busa called therefore for these Members of
Parliament to withdraw their candidacies.

Oh boy!

Following Busa's motion, it was a free-for-all no-holds-barred
tug-of-war: all UDPS MPs and their allies rushed to the podium,
hooting, blowing whistles--yeah, they actually brought with them
whistles inside the Congress Hall, though it's a mystery to me why
this rowdy bunch didn't think of the far more deafening vuvuzelas
Chinese shops are peddling in the Congolese capital!--jostling,
pulling, punching, shoving those who attempted to block them, and all
the while waving soccer referees' red cards at Acting Speaker Kombo
Nkisi.

As MP Kombo couldn't restore order, he suspended the session for one
hour in the hope that cool heads would prevail when the proceedings
would resume.

The reporter of the government-owned TV channel "RTNC3 Institutions"
relaying live the parliamentary session was in the meantime
desperately calling for the main station to interrupt broadcasting
live images of the melee. A self-censoring move, no doubt, that was
unfortunately duly granted.

An hour after its continuance, the session resumed in the same raucous ambiance.

Despite all the noise, Acting Speaker asked that 4 MPs speak on Busa's
motion--2 to defend it and 2 others "to destroy it," to use his own
terms.

MP Mutiri wa Bashara, who first spoke against the motion, wanted the
Speaker not to even bother with the motion and "to directly go to the
vote" of the permanent bureau.

(Acting Speaker Kombo then ordered "RTNC3 Institutions" to restore its
live broadcast as citizens were entitled to follow what was
transpiring in the precinct of the National Assembly--though by the
time he made this announcement the signal had already resumed.)

The second MP to speak against the motion (and to defend ADR's bona
fide opposition membership) dismissed Busa's accusations as baseless.
The time is long gone, he argued, when MLC was the sole representative
of the opposition, the latter now being a "plural opposition."

Busa's incidental motion was thereafter soundly defeated. After the
defeat of Busa's motion, the 4 dozen UDPS withdrew from the hall--with
the exception of 2 of them: Acting Speaker Kombo and MP André Paluku
Kavula, both candidates for the Second Vice-Presidency of the National
Assembly.

By which time the quorum had shrunk to 353 MPs.

In protest, MLC withdrew all its candidates.

By 18:38, when the vote was finally called (and after a final pitch by
the candidates present), the lineup of candidates was for the 5 posts
earmarked for the Presidential Majority was as follows:

1) Speaker: Aubin Minaku, "Parti du Peuple Pour la Reconstruction et
le Développement" (PPRD/Bandundu Province);

2) 1st Vice-President: Former Informateur Charles Mwando Simba of the
"Union Nationale des Démocrates Fédéralistes" (UNADEF/Katanga); and MP
Toussaint Ekombe Mpetsi of the "Parti Démocrate Chrétien"
(PDC/Equateur). Ekombe didn't stand a chance as he disobeyed the call
from his party leadership to desist;

3) Rapporteur: Norbert Ezadri, of the "Mouvement Social pour le
Renouveau" (MSR/Orientale);

4) Questor: Ms. Elysée Munembwe, of the "Alliance pour le Renouveau du
Congo" (ARC/North-Kivu);

5) Deputy Questor: Jean-Bosco Kaboyi, of the "Alliance des Forces
Démocratiques du Congo" (AFDC/South Kivu).

As I already said, the candidates for the 2 opposition posts were:

1) Second Vice-President: Acting Speaker Kombo (Bas-Congo) and MP
Paluku (North-Kivu)--both apparently rogue UDPS members; and

2) Deputy Rapporteur: Jean-Pierre Tshimanga (ADR/Occidental Kasai).

At 20:25, the tally of votes began, starting with the post of Speaker,
down to that of Deputy Rapporteur. A drawn-out and tedious affair
since the vote having been by secret ballot, the tally had to be
called out loud.

As of this writing, it's 9 p.m.; and they're still tallying the votes
for Aubin Minaku, the sole candidate for the Speakership. Given the
constraints of the Internet access alloted to me by Vodacom, my mobile
phone provider, I am now posting this (Minaku just got 343 votes)--for
barring an unforeseen and quite unlikely executive "act of God," the
lineup of the permanent bureau of the National Assembly will end up
being what I gave above. (It's now 9:35, Mwando Simba has just been
elected; and I can't still get access to the Internet.)

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New Malawian Prez Joyce Banda says God revealed to her Nigerian Spiritual Father that late Prez Mutharika made peace with Him

Joyce Banda aka JB

New Malawian President

The coup that many observers were fearing following the death of Malawian autocratic president, Bingu wa Mutharika, didn't happen after all. Malawi chose instead a peaceful constitutional transition of power--with Vice-President Joyce Banda, a foe of the deceased, taking over the reins of the presidency this past Saturday. This is a major act of democratic maturity shown by an African nation in so many days--the last previous act being that of Senegal where Macky Sall took over from President Wade, his political friend turned foe.

While congratulating the new president and the Malawian people, I also note that the era of obscurantism is far from over in Malawi.

Consider what Prez Banda told a coterie of her party members shortly after the swearing ceremony:

"We must look at the positive side of his leadership and personality and not the negative side. [Fine with me]. My Spiritual Father [Nigerian Prophet TB Joshua said that God] had revealed to him that before he died, Mutharika had made peace with God! My Spiritual Father therefore advised me and through me all Malawians that we should not rejoice at this otherwise sad news but we must respect the fallen president; he had made peace with God before he passed on" [Bullshit!]

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Death of a Homophobic President: Bingu wa Mutharika aka Bingallista (Saturday, February 24, 1934 – Thursday, April 5, 2012)

Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, president of Malawi, died yesterday of cardiac
arrest at Kamuzu Central Hospital, in the capital city of Lilongwe.
When he married the much younger former Tourism Minister Callista
Chimombo in 2010 after a 3-year widowhood, Malawian tabloids and
sycophants nicknamed the couple, the "Bingallista"--no doubt taking
their cue from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, aptly called the
Brangelina..
Mutharika's body was promptly flown to South Africa. The Malawian
daily Nyasa Times speculated that moving Mutharika's remains to South
Africa would allow the late "President's kitchen cabinet [to] continue
its aggressive ploy aimed at holding on to power at all cost."
It's rumored that this "kitchen cabinet" is cooking up some
unwholesome stuff: to override the constitution and appoint the
deceased president's brother, Foreign Minister Peter Mutharika, as new
head of state.
Never mind the Constitution, which, in its Section 83(4), states that
"Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of President, the First
Vice-President shall assume that office for the remainder of the term
and shall appoint another person to serve as First Vice-President for
the remainder of the term."
Well, Vice-President Joyce Banda had a nasty political row with the
deceased president in 2010 and has not spoken to the man for over a
year. And since this falling-out, it's the Foreign Minister who's been
standing in for his brother at official ceremonies.
It's also reported that the "kitchen's cabinet" has compelled Speaker
of Parliament Henry Chimunthu Banda to convene parliament next Tuesday
where a motion to change the constitution will be tabled.
Nyasa Times again: "Mutharika appeared to have been grooming his
Foreign Minister brother Peter as his successor."
Well, what could possibly be expected from a Banana Republic?
A BBC profile of Mutharika posted today asserts that his critics
charged that he "has not so much run the country as run the country
into the ground."
Pity on the good people of Malawi! With the looming constitutional
crisis, Malawians won't descend in the streets to rejoice by chanting:
"Good riddance!"
In April and May 2010, I posted on this blog 2 virulent rants against
Mutharika and the Malawian judiciary following the arbitrary arrest,
kangaroo trial, and conviction of Steven Monjenza, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga
on antiquated charges of "buggery."
Commenting on homosexuality before the trial of the two persecuted
young men, Mutharika said:
"Homosexuality is a strange act in the country... Malawians are even
aping cultures they do not understand. They are saying a man should
marry a fellow man. This is evil and bad before the eyes of God. There
are certain things we Malawians just do not do."
Let's hope that now that Muthakira has been untimely thrown into
His/Her/Its Presence, he'd come to realize that "buggery" isn't a sin
after all...

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National Assembly poised to elect its Permanent Bureau next week

The National Assembly's plenary session of today, Thursday, April 5,
was crucial, in that, as announced on "RTNC 3 Institutions," the
state-owned TV channel devoted to broadcasting live parliamentary
debates, its agenda included a communication to MPs of a ruling by the
Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ, in its French acronym), still acting as
the Constitutional Court. (The Constitutional Court is expected to be
set up during this legislature.)

Kinshasa media speculated that the CSJ announcement had to be about 2
pending matters: 1) The ruling of the high court on the reformulated
National Assembly's Article 22 of its rules and regulations (correct);
and 2) The CSJ final ruling on the more than 500 legislative election
disputes on its docket (wrong).

By the way, it's unclear as to when the ruling on the latter point
will be formally announced; or whether the CSJ would consider the
string of rulings it has already issued in a piecemeal way as formally
definitive. It was reported on Wedneday that the CSJ had announced
this Tuesday that it has finished examining and ruling on all pending
electoral litigations. In the event, the agenda of today's plenary
session didn't include this topic.

Though announced for 2 p.m. Kinshasa time (GMT + 1), Acting Speaker,
MP Timothée Kombo Nkisi, only opened the session at 2:57 p.m.

Speaker Kombo first dealt with the issue of the quorum. He said that
the National Assembly had a quorum as there were 351 MPs present, 5
MPs excused from attendance, 117 truants, and 27 seats still to be
filled.

(The National Assembly has therefore only 473 MPs, short of the 500 of
the full lower house: there were a dozen compilation centers
invalidated by the electoral commission for various reasons; and it's
unclear what CENI would do about this gap. Additionally, there are at
least 3 UDPS elected MPs who will never enter the hemicycle of the
National Assembly: Tshisekedi's son, sister, and next-door neighbor
who, according to the grapevine, is afraid of being assaulted by UDPS
supporters if he were to decide to sit in Parliament. Tshisekedi
recently disowned the four dozen UDPS MPs who have chosen to sit in
parliament, calling them mercenarie.)

Then Speaker Kombo announced the session's 3-point agenda: 1) Adoption
of the agenda of the session; 2) Examination of the minutes of the
plenary session of March 29 (at which Article 22 of the National
Assembly's rules and regulations was reformulated); and 3)
Communications of the Provisional Bureau of the National Assembly that
had 2 constituents: a) Announcement of the CSJ ruling on the
reformulated Article 22; and b) The Provisional Bureau's Calendar for
the election and installation of the permanent bureau.

The third point in the agenda was the one for which the
parliamentarians were bracing themselves.

In its first constituent, it was announced that the CSJ finally deemed
"conform to the Constitution" Article 22 of the National Assembly's
rules and regulations in its ruling of April 2. The reformulated
Article 22 states that the bureau has to reproduce within it the
configuration of the National Assembly.

The second constituent of the third point of the agenda was the
Provisional Bureau's calendar of the submission of candidacies to
various posts of the Permanent Bureau, the election campaign within
Parliament for those positions, the date of the election and the
installation of the aforementioned Bureau.

Some MPs jeered Speaker Kombo when he said that the calendar being an
"administrative decision," the matter wasn't debatable.

Speaker Kombo also reminded MPs of the consensus they'd previously
reached on power-sharing at the National Assembly.

He then proceeded to spell out that consensus, which was on the
positions slated respectively for the majority and the opposition in
the permanent Bureau:

1) 5 Majority posts: Speaker (President), First Vice-President,
Rapporteur, Questor, and Deputy Questor;

2) 2 Opposition posts: Second Vice-President (when Speaker Kombo read
out this position, the whole chamber erupted in applause, a way of
telling him he's the man for that job); and Deputy Rapporteur.

The calendar of election for these positions is as follows:

a) April 6: submission of candidacies;

b) April 7: billposting of candidates by the provisional Bureau;

c) April 8-9: electoral campaign;

d) April 10: election; and

e) April 10: installation of the permanent Bureau.

Two MPs, including MLC stalwart MP Jean-Lucien Busa, wanted the
Speaker to first publish the membership (to the majority or to the
opposition) of MPs before proceeding to the election of the permanent
Bureau--lest, I suspect, some pro-Kabila MPs run for positions
reserved for the opposition. Speaker Kombo responded that some members
have still to fill and sign those membership forms and asked them to
do so without further ado.

The session ended at 3:42 p.m.

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The obfuscation of a sexist pig called Vital Kamerhe

It's not as if Vital Kamerhe didn't see the writing on the wall. With
the exception of a small number of dewy-eyed foreign so-called
observers reporting from the Grand Hotel in downtown Kinshasa, every
single genuine observer of the Congolese scene knew it way before the
November 2011 general elections: It was sociologically and
ethnographically impossible for Etienne Tshishekedi to be elected Prez
of the DRC or for his coalition to win a parliamentary majority. The
eastern Swahili-speaking bloc plus the southwestern Bandundu Province
were all voting en masse for Kabila.

The numbers were simply not there for Tshisekedi. For one, the eastern
provinces are the most populous in the country and natives of Bandundu
Province, the stronghold of Antoine Gizenga's Parti Lumumbiste Unifié
(PALU), are "sectarians" who blindly tread the line of their
political elites. For the other, for voters in eastern and
southwestern Congo, Tshisekedi had conspired to assassinate Patrice
Lumumba in 1961; whereas Kabila was the latter's spiritual and
political heir. Period!

Defeated presidential candidate Vital Kamerhe, erstwhile Kabila's 2006
camapign manager, knew this open secret for fact. And yet he chose to
act the buffoon that he is.

Shortly after the elections, just after poll closing in the evening of
November 28, 2011, Kamerhe turned into a public crier, giving TV and
radio interviews left and right. In those interviews, Kamerhe was
leveling serious charges of massive vote rigging at Kabila and his
supporters. His accusations were apparently so precise and detailed
that some people, mostly dimwitted foreign reporters, started taking
them at face value.

Kamerhe should have kept blasting Kabila, the opposition's favorite
punching ball. But unfortunately for him, he went farther afield and
accused PPRD MP candidate, Wivine Moleka, a woman pol from the
Kinshasa Lukunga constituency, of having shown up at her polling
station with an armed police escort carrying stuffed ballots. He even
repeated that charge in an interview with Radio France Internationale
(RFI).

Maybe Kamerhe, a provincial sexist from the backwater of South Kivu
Province, thought he could slight Wivine Moleka, who comes across as
an outgoing and shy woman, and get away with it.

Little did Kamerhe know that:

1) Wivine Moleka, a Kinshasa-born politician who was running for
re-election, as per usual a media darling, had sparked the interest of
reporters who were following every single one of her moves. And there
are several TV reports with the footage of MP Wivine Moleka arriving,
unaccompanied, at her polling station to cast her vote;

2) The Molekas are a tentacular business and political family of the
Congolese capital, who hold their reputation and honor sacred. (By the
way, the older brother of Wivine, Albert Moleka, is Etienne
Tshisekedi's chief of staff and is arguably the last vestigial pol in
the UDPS leader's entourage.)

Kamerhe should therefore have been told that there was no way
Wivine--a Moleka to boot--would let pass his gratuitous and libelous
accusation.

By early December of last year, Wivine Moleka had sued Vital Kamerhe
at the Gombe District Court in Kinshasa on slanderous charges.

Now that the shit has hit the fan, Kamerhe is giving the sorry public
spectacle of a helpless idiot chewing and biting his fingernails after
dropping a clanger.

Consider the total grasping at straws of his defense; the pathetic
hair-splitting legalese his lawyers have come up with in a desperate
attempt to have Wivine Moleka's damning lawsuit dismissed.

At the last hearing at the Gombe District Court on March 27, Kamerhe's
defense lawyers wanted the court to dismiss the suit on the ground of
this tenuous technicality: their client was served the summons at an
address where he doesn't reside, that is, at the office of the
burgomaster of the Commune of Gombe.

A bald-faced lie, the summons having been sent to Kamerhe's various
addresses in Kinshasa--with copies to the Gombe burgomaster for
enforcement, as required by the Congolese Penal Code.

This dilatory maneuver having been dismissed by the court, Kamerhe's
lawyers, after a 2-hour recess, then came up with yet another
obfuscation: they were appealing that ruling at the appeal court!

This was the same type of obfuscatory maneuver by Kamerhe at a lower
court in December of last year.

The hearing was continued until the appeal court rules on this frivolous appel.

It's now dawning on Kamerhe that, unlike Kabila, Wivine Moleka isn't a
punching ball. And he's now also learning the hard way this lesson
from the heyday of the anti-apartheid struggle encapsulated by South
African women in this slogan: "You hit a woman, you hit a rock!"

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