Hollande, Etienne Tshisekedi; & Albert Moleka, Tshisekedi's spokesman.
Kinshasa, Maison de France, Saturday, October 13, 2012)
***
In his comment to the previous post, David Aronson of "Congo
Resources" advocacy blog, criticized the stance of some Congolese
oppositionists who were pushing for the cancelation of François
Hollande's participation at the 14th Francophony Summit in Kinshasa.
Aronson wrote he thought "it's better for Hollande to go to Kinshasa
and make a stink than stay home in protest."
And come here in Kinshasa and make a stink, Hollande did both.
Hollande, who flew in Kinshasa from Dakar in the morning of October
23, went out of his way to be as much disagreeable-- humanly and
undiplomatically--as possible to President Joseph Kabila.
To be sure, there were the handshakes and the smirks with Kabila and
the DRC first lady, Olive Lembe, in front of the cameras.
But at the morning 35-minute closed-door meeting with Kabila,
Hollande is reported to have been blunt, almost "insulting," according
to one angry protocol official familiar with what had transpired
--bloviating on the fundamentals of democracy and human rights;
playing the part of the pedantic Dr. Know-It-All who loves listening
to the sound of his own voice.
(Kabila belatedly countered this charge of flouting democracy and
human rights at a press briefing on Sunday, at the close of the
Summit.
Kabila said:
"The Democratic Republic of Congo, our country, is proud of democracy
practised in this country. The DRC feels in no way ashamed as to the
level of democracy, freedom, [and] the situation of human rights.")
Talking to the press after the closed-door meeting with Kabila and
with the latter standing mum by his side as his silent sidekick,
Hollande claimed there were good stuff in the offing in the DRC which
he's already applauded--like the upcoming reform of the national
electoral commission as well as the soon to be created independent
national commission on human rights.
In other words, anyhing positive has yet to be done.
Then followed the public slap on the face of Kabila, the host of the Summit.
Hollande was the only head of state in attendance who didn't applaud
Kabila at the end of the speech he delivered at the opening of the
Summit.
And when he took to the lectern in the congress hall of the Palais du
Peuple, the seat of Parliament stunningly redecorated and refurbished
by the Chinese, Hollande went for the jugular:
"It is in French that the 1789 revolutionaries had proclaimed and
therefore written the Declaration of Human and Citizens' Rights.
"Francophony should carry democracy, human rights, pluralism, respect
for freedom of expression, the affirmation that every single human
being ought to be able to choose their leaders."
Speaking to the press at the end of his participation in the Summit,
Hollande continued his ad-hominen attacks on Kabila.
He said in part:
"I also came here, in Kinshasa, to speak clearly as I committed myself
to so doing in Dakar--that is, I don't change discourses depending on
locations and depending on interlocutors.
"I say not what I think but that which France carries as message, as
principles, as values."
This Hollande-speak is construed by Congolese ruling elites to be
nothing less than a "relentless neocolonial assault on Kabila and the
Congolese people," as one Kinshasa University senior academic official
put it to me.
(The same academic told me it was about time the DRC switched from the
"dead tongue of French" to the ''language of the future and sciences
that English represents," pointing out in passing that it was an
African, Léopold Sedar Senghor, who'd coined the word "Francophonie,
not the unintelligent François Hollande.")
In the meantime, Hollande's "relentless" assault continued unabated at
the unveiling of the commemorative plaque for the slain rights
activist Floribert ''Flori" Chebeya at Kinshasa French Cultural
Center, where a new media library center has just been named after
Chebeya.
Talking at the ceremony in front of the families of the late Chebeya
and Fidèle Bazana (Chebeya's driver), Hollande said:
"If we are doing this, it is so that there's a trial, that the
presumed culprits be brought to justice"; adding that there were still
"unacceptable realities" in the DRC.
Hollande was deliberately ignoring the fact that the case was tried;
that the culprits found guilty and sentenced; that the case is now
being tried on appeal.
Crowning his defiance of Kabila, Hollande met with the "historic
oppositionist" (Hollande's own words) Etienne Tshisekedi in the early
evening of Saturday at the Maison Française.
Strangely, Tshisekedi, ordinarily batshit crazy, was unusually
cool-headed, and more importantly, clear-headed about the
relationships between his country and a foreign power.
Emerging from the meeting with Hollande, Tshisekedi answered a journo,
who wanted to know whether he felt any added sense of legitimacy in
his meeting the French president, by stating:
"Legitimacy in the Congo can only stem from the people. In France, I
don't see whether another person could come from abroad to legitimize
whomever in France. It's exactly the same thing in our country."
Be that as it might, Congolese critics of Hollande's negative attitude
toward Kabila points to his "neocolonial cavalier attitude" in meeting
with Tshisekedi in the presence of the French "Ministre d'Outre-Mer,"
who is in charge of France's overseas territories, some of which are
still reclaiming their independence from France.
A feeling somewhat echoed by Serge Michailof, associate researcher at
the Paris-based Institut de Relations Internationales (IRIS) and a
consultant for the World Bank, who, in an interview with the Parisian
daily Le Journal du Dimanche published on the same day that Hollande
was antagonizing Kabila, bluntly assessed the French President's
perfomance in Kinshasa as follows:
"François Hollance has evinced a will to frankness. Though he denies
this, he has a self-righteous tone about it which I find disturbing.
"Let's take the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"The French president recalled the doubtful conditions of the
re-election of Joseph Kabila.
"It's a reality, but it is inappropriate.
"That country has just emerged from a civil war that has lasted 10
years and that has cost 4 million lives.
"The political equilibrium is very fragile and François Hollande puts
it at peril by receiving Etienne Tshisekedi, an 82-year old historic
oppositionist.
"You've got to be careful; on the equilibrium of the DRC depends the
equilibrium of the whole Central Africa.
"François Hollande hardly knows Africa and he was poorly briefed [by
his aides]."
A few days ago, DRC Media Minister called this lack of proper
briefing, a "deficit of information" on the Congo on the part of
François Hollande.
In Kinshasa streets meanwhile, feelings vary between derision of
Kabila for having been so brazenly mocked on his home turf and anger
directed at him for having allowed Hollande to trample on the
sovereignty of the DRC as well as to openly insult its head of state.
--(With lejdd.fr; newswires; Kinshasa media & Radio-Trottoir)--
***
PHOTO CREDITS:
AFP PHOTO POOL /BERTRAND LANGLOIS
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