1) Gridlock in National Assembly; and 2) Out-of-control Secretary General MARIE-JEANNE ALULA, at the Ministry of Higher Education

1) Gridlock in National Assembly





Gridlock has been marring the National Assembly of late.





The contention is over the sharing of the chairmanships of the 7

permanent commissions and over the political make-up of the 35 members

of those commissions.





The opposition was offered 10 seats in those commissions, whereas the

majority planned on keeping for themselves the lion's sharea: 25

seats. The opposition rejected that offer and wants at the very least

12 seats.





Furthermore, opposition MPs also want to have the chairmanship of two

key commissions: 1) the Political, Administrative and Judicial

Commission (acronymed PAJ in French); and 2) the Economic and

Financial Commission (ECOFIN). A non-starter for the Presidential

Majority (MP).





Besides this wrangle with the opposition, things are further

complicated by the lack of consensus between the different caucuses

within the Presidential Majority as to which groups these individual

commissions should go to and, again, which MPs should sit in those

commissions.





A rift within the majority that was revealed by MP Ramazani Shadari,

the head of the PPRD parliamentary group, at the plenary session of

May 16.





In an unprecedented plea that put on public display the gridlock, MP

Ramazani Shadari wanted Speaker Aubin Minaku to personally intervene

so as to help settle the disagreements within the majority and the

discord between the latter and the opposition.





Speaker Minaku declined to intervene, reminding MP Ramazani that his

role was by no means to "impose a consensus" but to facilitate

contacts between various groups.





The plenary session slated for today at noon, to resolve these

contentious issues, has been postponed for tomorrow at 10am Kinshasa

time (GMT + 1).





***





2) Out-of-control Secretary General MARIE-JEANNE ALULA, at the

Ministry of Higher Education





Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo is praised for the discipline he

wants to instill into his change-proof cabinet members.





It's reported that Matata typically opens his cabinet meetings at

7:30am, and any minister who arrives one minute later is denied access

to the meeting.





Matata is said to be uncompromisingly strict on punctuality. And a few

ministers were once again at the receiving end of Matata's strictness

at the second "technical meeting" of his cabinet on Monday, May 14.





(Kabila chairs ordinary cabinet meetings in the presence of Matata,

whereas the latter holds so-called technical meetings in which precise

government's plans, benchmarks and timetables are discussed and

implemented.)





It's rumored that in the first technical meeting, Lambert Mende was

shut off of the meeting for latedness, which is ironic, considering

that one of his new charges--besides Media and Relations with

Parliament--is the (much-mocked by the opposition) "Initiation to the

new citizenship," which is intended to mold the new disciplined

Congolese persona!





But it seems that the real test of Prime Minister Matata will be to

discipline the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research,

where Secretary General MARIE-JEANNE ALULA has literally been running

amok since March 1, when she was reassigned to the Ministry of Gender

and Family by the former Minister of Civil Service.





Marie-Jeanne Alula has proven to be a powerful lady indeed.





Refusing to abide by the ministerial ordnance, Alula had, on May 9,

the Appeal Court of Kinshasa-Gombe seal the doors to the offices of

the personnel she deemed to be working against her interests--all the

while placing threatening phone calls against them.





When the sidelined personnel broke into their offices, Ms. Alula had

locks to those offices changed nightly on May 10.





On May 15, the personnel who had removed those seals were unlawfully

shadowed by police detectives and arbitrarily detained.





Yesterday, I was on the grounds of the campus of Kinshasa University

to talk about the ongoing soap opera at the Ministry of Higher

Education to two mid-level managers of the university, who, strangely,

only accepted to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity.





They told me Ms. Alula is a corrupt official who usually dips into the

funds earmarked for the university. She's also a nepotist, they said,

who employs two of her unqualified daughters in her cabinet.





So much for the new style of governance being preached by Prime

Minister Matata. Also: Either the new Minister of Higher Education,

Bonaventure Chielo Lutsima--freshly from Orientale Province--is a

spineless incompetent provincial doofus; or Ms. Marie-Jeanne Alula is

protected by the very powers-that-be that are bamboozling the

citizenry with empty words about "new citizenship" and "modernity

revolution!"