Forget all about the Mayan Calendar coming to a screeching halt onDecember 21 of this year; on which day--New Age shamans andsurvivalists and astrophysics buffs and crooks warn us--a perfectgalactic alignment will trigger doomsday events worldwide: End ofTimes! Rapture!What gives me the heebie-jeebies these days is the "trivialization andcretinization of American politics"--to use The New YorKer JonCassidy's phrase-- which is likely to give the world a faineantPlanetarch name of Mitt Romney, who itches to nuke Iran to smithereensas a teaser for...
Friday, 20 April 2012
Thursday, 19 April 2012
By appointing as prime minister Augustin Matata Poyo Mapon, who turns48 in June, President Joseph Kabila signals a double clean break: 1)firstly, a generational break; and 2) secondly, a break with Congolesepolitics as usual. 3) But more important, Kabila has arguablyjumpstarted his last presidential term in a dramatic fashion.1) In the run-up to the appointment of the new prime minister, punditsof all stripes, who speculated about the profile and even provided abevy of names of those that stood a chance of being appointed aspremier, didn't even...
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Kabila couldn't have chosen a better time to announce the promotion ofcurrent Finance Minister Augustin Matata Mponyo to premiership in theevening of this Wednesday, August 18: during the half-time of theChampions League semi-final match pitting Barcelona against Chelsea; amatch that was being relayed live on government-owned TV channel"RTNC" (as of this writing, the match was still being played atStanford Bridge stadium in London).Prime Minister Matata survived almost unscathed the plane crash inwhich Augustin Katumba Mwanke died this past February.A...
Monday, 16 April 2012
According to Kinshasa grapevine of Radio-Trottoir, Joseph Kabila isabout to appoint Georges Buse, sixtiish, as prime minister.Geoges Buse was the chief of staff of Laurent Kabila, the assassinatedformer president and father of the incumbent.Buse, aged between 65-68, is from a prominent family of Kisangani, theprovincial 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 ofKisangani. It's rumored he didn't make to full bishop because...
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Pandemonium broke out today at the National Assembly after theincidental motion introduced by rabble-rouser MLC MP Jean-Lucien Busa.Busa made his motion about a half-hour after the opening of theplenary session 14:09 Kinshasa Time (GMT + 1)--subsequent to theadoption of the day's agenda and quorum call (423 MPs were present).Today's session had in its main agenda the election of the permanentbureau of the National Assembly.Busa's incidental motion questioned the candidacies to the 2 postsearmarked for the opposition by some MPs who, according to...
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Joyce Banda aka JBNew Malawian PresidentThe 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...
Friday, 6 April 2012
Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, president of Malawi, died yesterday of cardiacarrest at Kamuzu Central Hospital, in the capital city of Lilongwe.When he married the much younger former Tourism Minister CallistaChimombo in 2010 after a 3-year widowhood, Malawian tabloids andsycophants nicknamed the couple, the "Bingallista"--no doubt takingtheir cue from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, aptly called theBrangelina..Mutharika's body was promptly flown to South Africa. The Malawiandaily Nyasa Times speculated that moving Mutharika's remains to SouthAfrica would...
Thursday, 5 April 2012
The National Assembly's plenary session of today, Thursday, April 5,was crucial, in that, as announced on "RTNC 3 Institutions," thestate-owned TV channel devoted to broadcasting live parliamentarydebates, its agenda included a communication to MPs of a ruling by theSupreme Court of Justice (CSJ, in its French acronym), still acting asthe Constitutional Court. (The Constitutional Court is expected to beset up during this legislature.)Kinshasa media speculated that the CSJ announcement had to be about 2pending matters: 1) The ruling of the high...
Monday, 2 April 2012
It's not as if Vital Kamerhe didn't see the writing on the wall. Withthe exception of a small number of dewy-eyed foreign so-calledobservers reporting from the Grand Hotel in downtown Kinshasa, everysingle genuine observer of the Congolese scene knew it way before theNovember 2011 general elections: It was sociologically andethnographically impossible for Etienne Tshishekedi to be elected Prezof the DRC or for his coalition to win a parliamentary majority. Theeastern Swahili-speaking bloc plus the southwestern Bandundu Provincewere all voting en...
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