Doozy Wednesday in National Assembly: Opposition boycotts closed-session interpellation of Defense and Interior Ministers over alleged secret accords with Rwanda

Wednesdays are usually devoted to current affairs issues in the

National Assembly.





Ordinarily, those Wedneday sessions are dull affairs where one MP

after another would take to the floor to deliver long-winded

monologues--no doubt to impress, surely not other fellow MPs who then

take that opportunity to talk on their mobile phones or flick through

their newspapers; but most certainly viewers of RTNC-3, the

parliamentary TV channel that carries live sessions of both houses of

Parliament.





But this Wednesday, May 30, was different, as for the first time two

important cabinet members of the new government were interpellated by

the opposition.





The two ministers interpellated are government heavyweights whose

purview is the country's critical security sectors: 1) Deputy Prime

Minister and Defense Minister Alexandre Luba Ntambo; and 2) Interior

and Security Minister Richard Muyej.





Two vocal opposition MPs had lodged the "oral questions with debate"

to the ministers:





1) Former Kinshasa provincial MP and current national MP Martin

Fayulu, leader of the party ECIDé (Engagement pour la Citoyenneté et

le Développement); and





2) South-Kivu MP Jemsi Mulengwa of PANADER (Parti National pour la

Démocratie et la République).





Deputy Premier Alexandre Luba Ntambo had to explain the nature of the

alleged recent secret security accord the DRC government entered into

with its Rwandan counterpart, without first informing the National

Assembly; whereas Interior Minister Richard Muyej had to respond to

questions over insecurity in South-Kivu Province, particularly around

the locality of Fizi.





But shortly after opening the plenary session, with the two cabinet

ministers in attendance, Speaker Aubin Minaku, invoking Article 60 of

the Rules and Regulations of the National Assembly, ruled that, given

the sensitive and classified nature of the issues, the debate had to

be carried out behind closed doors.





This ruling didn't sit well with opposition MPs--especially with the

two MPs who had fielded the oral questions.





Claiming that not the Speaker alone but all the MPs present could

decide on holding a closed-door plenary session, and accusing the

parliamentary majority and the government of dissembling about the

alleged security treaty with Rwanda, opposition MPs stormed out of the

National Assembly.





Paradoxically, Deputy Premier Alexandre Luba Ntambo and Interior

Minister Richard Muyej made their responses in a closed-door session

in the absence of the authors of the oral questions.





Talking to the press outside the Congress Hall of the National

Assembly, MP Martin Fayulu charged:





"It's a move against the Constitution and against the rules and

regulations [of the National Assembly]. The Speaker of the Assembly

can't decree a closed-door session. It's the plenary session that

should do it. The minister [of defense] had signed accords in Rwanda

without informing the Parliament."





Well, the second paragraph of Article 60 the rules and regulations

merely states:





"Sessions of National Assembly are public except if, exceptionally, a

closed-door session is pronounced."





As nothing in that title clearly identifies who should "pronounce" the

necessity of a close-door session, Speaker Minaku rightly assumed it

was his privilege to do so.





MPs have only themselves to blame for this gaping loophole in the

rules and regulations of the National Assembly.





Kinois in the streets and sidewalk bars were outraged and were fuming

yesterday afternoon over Speaker Minaku's procedural gimmick that

prevented them from witnessing their hero Fayulu embarrass two

cabinet ministers in what had been billed by the opposition all along

the previous days as a live TV event.





Most Kinois I spoke to claimed that Congolese leaders were a bunch of

dissemblers in cahoots with Rwanda and Ntaganga.





"They're mocking residents of the republic big time," one woman

exclaimed. "They are Rwanda's accomplices in the plunder of our

mineral resources."





Her boyfriend mocked the preposterous idea of holding a closed-door

session on classified matters "with five hundred Congolese big mouths

in attendance."





"I could've believed Minaku's explanation if it was a small committee

hearing," he added. "Not with the full house. He's a liar! He thinks

we're his gullible fools!"