Radio-Trottoir Feed: Government mocks Residents of the Republic

I'd be exaggerating if I said that the mood is insurrectionary in Kinshasa.





(Though on Monday there were motorized patrols by heavily armed

"robots," as riot cops are dubbed here, after incidents in which

posses of the Drivers' Association of the Congo beat up those of their

members who scabbed, burning their vehicles. And last night, I saw two

UN police trucks on patrol.)





There's definitely no mass movement of outrage able to coalesce into

something akin to the worlwide urban uprisings of Indignados or Occupy

WallStreet and the likes.





But make no mistake. Anger, resentment, and frustration directed at PM

Augustin Matata Ponyo are not only palpable but have also about

reached boiling point among residents of the People's Republic of

Kinshasa ever since Monday one-day strike by public transport

operators.





(The strike so much terrified the powers-that-be that President Joseph

Kabila hastily convened Monday an emergency cabinet meeting where it

was agreed to rid transporters of the daily hassles they face on their

routes. The government also promised to purchase a fleet of buses to

revive two moribund state-owned public transport companies.)





Parts of the deleterious mood in the Congolese capital were captured

in the op-ed published Tuesday, May 22, by the daily Le Potentiel and

titled "Accord de Kigali : des monstrueuses contradictions" [Kigali

Accord: Monstrous Contradictions].





The article excoriates PM Augustin Matata Ponyo whose government, it

charges, is conspiscuously notable for its infirmities and

"monstrous" "inner contradictions."





A government that has turned its own citizens into saps and suckers

it's "mocking" with impunity, the op-ed contends.





Though the piece deals primarily with the two rounds talks held in the

Rwandan cities of Rubavu and Kigali in mid-May between Rwandan and

Congolese governments (meetings about which the government said

nothing to the nation), it also charges the prime minister of dragging

his heels in drafting the budget for the current fiscal year (the

government operates by increments of quarterly interim budgets!), and

of lacking a coherent urban public transportation policy that caused

on Monday a major disruption in the livelihood of millions of Kinois.





The ire of Kinois is further exacerbated by the reappearance on

opposition TV shows of Kinois MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba leveling

renewed charges of theft of public money against former PM Adolphe

Muzito (see also my post of March 15, 2012).





Gécoco is backing his accusations with extensive footage of what he

calls the "sprawling field of mushrooms of villas, office and

apartment buildings" Muzito has purchased or is having built by German

construction teams in Kinshasa and his native Kikwit (Bandundu

Province) with money allegedly stolen from government coffers.





A mockery of citizens that has gone haywire.





No love lost then between the Kinois and Premier Matata--their

newfound whipping boy. (Why they don't go after Matata's boss--the

Prez, that is--is a mystery to me.)





This situation makes for fertile ground for the wildest conspirary theories.





One of those conspiracy theories was mainstreamed by Le Potentiel's

op-ed mentioned above.



This conspiracy theory alleges that Congolese authorities have

themselves been turned into saps and suckers by the Rwandan

government.





Item: Just when the FARDC were in the thick of their

search-and-destroy ops against militiamen led by Jean-Bosco Ntaganda

and his associates, Rwanda twice called security summits to deal with

the FDLR in order to justify yet another intervention in the Congo in

the guise of joint military operations.





These summits were no doubt a Rwandan dilatory move to give much

needed respite to Ntaganda's militiamen and to stymie the momentum of

the FARDC with meaningless talks focusing on the FDLR threat.





A first security meeting was convened on May 12 at Rubavu; and a

second one on May 18-19 in the Rwandan capital.





Never mind if this was the annual 5th Ordinary Session of the Mixed

Commission Rwanda-DRC, a gathering usually held in May.





The narrative of the conspirary theory transmogrifies the Congolese

government into a Janus-faced entity: a spineless government when it

is faced with the Rwandan bully and boogeyman; a callous government

that relentlessly hassles and mocks its own citizens!