1) Supreme Court strikes down Article 22 of National Assembly's rules and regulations; and 2) Playing it by ear: Kabila's wasted first 100 days

1) DRC Supreme Court strikes down Article 22 of National Assembly's
rules and regulations

Article 22 of the rules and regulations of the new National Assembly
was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice on
Monday, March 26.

The article provided that the bureau and the committees of the
National Assembly had to be proportionally earmarked for majority and
opposition parties according to their numerical strength.

In its ruling, however, the Supreme Court found that the article was
"discriminatory" and thus violated Article 13 of the Constitution,
which proscribes any form of discrimation.

The Supreme Court determined that independent MPs were unfairly
excluded from this power sharing arrangement in the National Assembly.

The National Assembly then scrambled to rephrase that article, by
including independent MPs--with former Communication Minister and
newly elected MP Lambert Mende playing a leading role in the
reformulation of the article.

After this correction, the new rules and regulations were sent back to
the Supreme Court.

2) Playing it by ear: Kabila's wasted first 100 days

In a stinging op-ed published today, Kinshasa daily Le Potentiel
charged that Kabila wasted his first 100 days (December 20, 2011-March
30, 2012) stuck in "limbo." The op-ed also argued that during that
period the government seemed to have been "playing it by ear,"
"without benchmarks." A "grace period," the paper intimated, whose
political capital Kabila may have wasted.

Le Potentiel points to the following dysfunctions, among many others:
a) The provisional government is operating on a stopgap budget (1/10th
of the last one): the previous MPs had refused to vote this year's
budget on the flimsy pretext that they weren't paid their golden
handshake; b) The information mandate of MP Charles Mwando Simba might
have been superfluous as after the election Kabila had a clear
majority in parliament; c) The new National Assembly is 15 days late
in its operations, with a permanent bureau still to be elected; etc.

But the op-ed failed to mention the ongoing crisis in the provisional
government, pitting the acting Premier and the acting Minister of
Higher Education.

A crisis that shows that Congolese pols have either taken leave of
their senses or put paid to the notion of good governance.

It is reported that a few days before resigning, the outgoing Civil
Service Minister and elected MP decided to shuffle secretary generals
of different ministries, that is, making them exchange posts with one
another.

A strange decision as it were, since in DRC civil service secretary
generals are not political appointees: they had moved up through the
hierarchy within their own ministries and are typically considered as
experts or technocrats in their own right.

When he took over, the acting Premier voided that stupid ministerial
ordinance and ordered secretary generals to go back to their previous
posts.

But the acting Minister of Higher Education is refusing to comply and
keeps within his ministerial cabinet a secretary general he'd
appointed by conniving with the outgoing civil service minister. There
are now 2 secretary generals at this ministry--the legitimate one, a
lady who's worked for over a decade in that position, being shown the
door!

Strangely, the acting Premier can't do anything about that.

I'm receiving word that this rogue minister is one of the most vocal
sycophants of Kabila and therefore thinks he's somewhat untouchable.

In other words: the more that changes, the more it's the same bullshit!

Read More

Charles Mwando Simba wraps up information mandate with report to Prez and press briefing

Former Defense Minister and newly elected MP, Charles Mwando Simba,
wrapped up his information mandate at 11:00 this morning with a press
conference at Venus Hotel, in downtown Kinshasa.

Mwando's press briefing comes hard on the heels of the audience he had
yesterday with Kabila at the latter's office at the Palais de la
Nation. During the short audience with Kabila, Mwando handed to the
Prez his final report on his information mandate that consisted in
identifying the parliamentary majority (from which will stem the
oncoming Prime Minister), paying heed to the opposition's observations
and recommendations, and consulting with civil society members as well
as experts and "extra-parliamentary" politicos (such as former
vice-presidents Azarias Ruberwa and Arthur Z'Hahidi Ngoma) in order to
register their inputs on governance and the profile of the those
expected to fill cabinet positions.

Mwando has to be commended for accomplishing his mission in just 16
days, a far shorter period than the 30 days mandated by the
Constitution.

Mwando started out by decrying the fact that shameless and heedless
ambitious pols kept bombarding him with their resumes--most of which
highlighted their "tribal membership"--despite his prior warning and
reminder that his task was only limited to identifying a parliamentary
majority.

He then laid out what he called the "contours" and the "methodology"
of his mission.

The political consultations, he said, were carried out in 2 stages:

1) With parliamentarians of the majority and their independent
associates within the National Assembly. With this group, Mwando
asserted, the task was easy enough, as it was only question of their
confirming by signing their "adherence" to the "charter" binding this
group to Kabila's program so-called "modernity revolution" along its
main axes and indicators: social improvement, economic development,
security reform, governance, etc.;

2) With opposition pols. This group comprised 3 subgroups: a) Those
willing to compromise with Kabila on his program. Some in this group
even joined the majority (this is the case of François Mwamba
Tshishimbi, former secretary general of MLC expelled from his party on
the accusation of attempting to replace Jean-Pierre Bemba as its
chairman); b) Those expressing the need of creating a new majority
within parliament (a view voiced by Senate President and former
presidential candidate Léon Kengo wa Dondo); and c) Those demanding
that a national dialogue be opened to resolve the "political crisis"
and re-establish "political legitimacy" (memo sent to Charles Mwando
Simba by Etienne Tshisekedi's UDPS).

As could be expected, Mwando gave short shrift to the last two propositions.

In dismissing Kengo's suggestion, Mwando explained that this kind of
search for a new parliamentary configuration could only take place had
Kabila's coalition not achieved a clear majority in parliament. In
this event, the Prime Minister would issue from the opposition. This,
he said, was the schema of "cohabitation" in France. In the current
situation, said Mwando, such an arrangement isn't warranted.

As for the so-called "political crisis," Mwando forcefully asserted
that this "crisis obsession" only existed in the minds of some
Kinshasa politicians.

With the close of Mwando's mandate, the ball is now in the camp of the
Supreme Court, which still has to confirm the newly elected MPs and
determine the constitutionality of the new rules and regulations voted
by the National Assembly, prior to Kabila appointing the new Prime
Minister.

Read More

1) Looming Africa's Water Wars; 2) DRC to UN Joint Human Rights Office: "Show us those mass graves!"

Several years ago, when Africa's World War was still raging on, my
Burundian buddy and then housemate Alexis Sinduhidje told me one day
in Cambridge, MA: "If you think this war is bloody, then brace for the
looming bloddier Africa's Water Wars, whose battleground will also be
the Congo!"

I've always taken seriously everything Alexis says.

But most Congolese I've talked to since then about the looming water
wars didn't take that possibility seriously--with the exception of one
senior officer of the FARDC General Staff who actually brought the
subject in a conversation I had with him several weeks ago.

March 22 was the UN World Water Day. And on that occasion, DRC
Conservation Minister José Endundo Bononge, whose ministry's purview
is also naturally water resource management, made a 5-minute nightly
television appearance to remind citizens about this year's theme of
that celebration: Water and Food Security.

The only interesting part of Endundo's address was when he mentioned
the disruptive impact of climate change on agriculture
calendar--especially as agriculture here relies on rainfall--resulting
in dramatic decreases of annual yields.

Not a word however about silting that threatens streams, brooks, and
waterways. Not a peep about water jacinths choking life out of the
Congo River and its affluents. Nothing about the sediments of plastic
bags and raw sewage killing brooks right here in Kinshasa. And more
importantly, a total blackout on the link between water and conflict.

Had I been able to talk to the minister, I'd have brought to the
attention of Endundo two scary articles published respectively on
March 22 and 23: 1) Karen DeYoung's "Water as a weapon" (Washington
Post) and Steven Lee Myers's "U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global
Water Tensions" (New York Times).

Both articles report ominous findings in the declassified version of a
report on future water-related conflicts released Thursday by the
office of the Director of National Intelligence, which alleges that,
in the coming decade, "Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and
floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a
weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic
areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa"--thus
having an "impact [on] U.S. security interests" (Washington Post).

Interestingly, notes the Washington Post, while "the unclassified
version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes
'strategically important water basins' tied to rivers in several
regions."

Which means that the Congo Basin, being among the world's 4 largest
river basins, was most definitely mentioned in the report. Which begs
the following question: What are the designs or the assessment of the
classified version of the report on the Congo Basin?

These articles also mention that the release of the report "coincides"
with Secretary Hillary Clinton's "scheduled announcement" of a new
public-private partnership to help the world face up to this water
challenge (Washington Post). And the article in The New York Times
specifies that among the private partners Secretary Clinton has in
mind is Coca-Cola!

This would certainly sound as a cruel joke in India ...

Secretary Clinton is well aware that Coca-Cola has been repeatedly
sued by peasants and landowners in rural India... for sucking ground
water dry so as to manufacture its products... and in drought-stricken
areas no less! In one instance in an Indian state, a court ordered a
Coca-Cola plant to shut down its operations and pay more than $1m in
damages to water-deprived local farmers. And another court case is
still pending in another Indian state.

It thus follows that no one in India would ever buy this Foggy Bottom
bunkum. Indeed, it's all about US national security interests, not
those of some Indian impoverished peasants. And if it suits US
interests to let Coca-Cola dry those suckers out of their livelihoods,
so be it! Remember that under Ronald Reagan, Coca-Cola, taking its cue
from the administration, refused to divest from apartheid-ruled South
Africa.

Security-challenged DRC and other countries in the Congo Basin will be
particularly vulnerable in those water wars.

A dystopian movie pitch... Sometime in an unspecified future. Dawn of
a new scramble for Africa... Africa, where a third of the population
has already been wiped out by "climate weirding," to use Thomas
Friedman's phrase. Mightier countries within the UN Security Council
vote a resolution to send their armies to seize the mismanaged water
resources of the Congo Basin... where the Congo River is slowly drying
up after the implementation of the crazy notion of deflecting a part
of the water of the Congo River to the shrinking Lake Chad, which
didn't help: the Chad ended up drying out completely.

In that venture, the US outsources water management in that region to
Coca-Cola and other American soda companies... under the protection of
AFRICOM and mercenaries.

2) DRC to UN Joint Human Rights Office: "Show us those mass graves!"

The report released Tuesday by the UN Joint Human Rights Office on the
alleged killings and other human rights violations during the election
period in November of last year is so outlandish that one doesn't
where to start to refute it.

It is just such exercise that the government has been attempting since
the release of the report. Furthermore, the government has now upped
the ante and is demanding a full-scale investigation into the
selective, partial, and spurious allegations contained in the report.

Justice Minister Périclès-Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa came out first
swinging two days ago. He denounced the report as a web of lies and
an attempt to torpedo the hosting by the DRC in October (12th to 14th)
of this year of the 14th Francophonie Summit.

"This report appears to only aim to tarnish the image of Congolese
authorities," Luzolo said.

Luzolo is dead on target there. In fact, some of the allegations in
that report had all the earmarks redolent of worn-out and preporterous
cliches of Zaire-Congo Bashing.

Consider for example the allegation that Kabila has his torture
chambers in the basement of the Palais du Peuple, the seat of National
Assembly.

This ridiculous allegation reminded me of the documentary "When We
Were Kings" in which you hear Norman Mailer lie through his teeth
when he makes the stupid claim that Mobutu had his torture chambers in
the basement of Tata Raphael soccer stadium where Ali and Foreman had
their Rumble in the Jungle bout. The problem with Mailer's lie is that
there's no basement at that stadium!

The DRC government is so exercised by the many lies contained in the
UN Joint Human Rights Office report that Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, flanked by Luzolo and his deputy, convened
today ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa to a press conference where
he vented the government's outrage over the "lightness" and frivolity
of the report. Thambwe also earnestly demanded that a joint
investigation be carried out to look into the bizarre accusations made
in the report.

Thambwe acknowledge however that there were 22 dead in
election-related violence, more than half of whom were killed by UDPS
members--not the 33 killed the report alleged
to have been killed by security forces or the 16 people that still
"remain unaccounted for." He was also stunned by the fact that the
report didn't even bother to mention the call to ethnic hatred or
violence repeatedly made by one of the candidates (Tshisekedi) during
the electoral campaign.

(Tshisekedi was clamoring that Kabila is a Rwandan Tutsi who needed to
be sent back home. He also called for countrywide prison breaks, and
asked his followers to "terrorize" then Communication Lambert Mende
and to physically seize and bring him Kabila.)

Thambwe also showed a brochure seized a while ago by immigration
agents from UDPS Jacquemain Shabani at N'Djili Airport. The brochure
purported to document election violence in the Congo. The photographs
of slain people in Shabani's brochure were in fact taken from press
accounts documenting violence in Cote d'Ivoire and in Uganda!

Thambwe also demanded that UN Joint Human Rights Office investigators
show those mass graves they allege to have uncovered in Kinshasa.

Read More

Updated by my daughter on Jason Russell's Incident

Yesterday at 7:31 (Kinshasa Time: GMT + 1) I got a call from my
daughter Elikia who was on board a plane on the tarmac of Edinburgh
airport, Scotland, en route to Washington, D.C. She was using Skype on
her laptop.

A part of the conversation went like this:

"Hey, dad, you know that guy on Kony 2012 video--the narrator?"

"Yeah... Jason Russell."

"Right. You won't believe this: he was arrested in San Diego. He was
naked in the street, masturbating!"

Unbelievable! At the moment, as Elikia only mentioned the incident by
the end of the short phone call, I thought Russell had gone Pee-wee
Herman in a big way. So I laughed my head off.

But later on, when I Googled the story, I wasn't laughing anymore. The
stories I read talked of a "meltdown," a "brief psychosis," or a
"nervous breakdown"...

Commenting on the incident, John Ross Bowie said: " You realize this
doesn't automatically make Joseph Kony a nice guy, right?" (Hollywood
Reporter, 3/17/2012).

Right!

Nonetheless there are two biblical twists to this story... (I am after
all in deep millenarian immersion these days: almost everyone in
Kinshasa thinks rapture could happen within the next few minutes.)

The 2 twisted biblical readings would go something like this:

1) Twist # One

God was really mad at the flak Russell got for exposing the murderous
false prophet called Kony. To make his point in a dramatic way, He
altered the mind of Jason Russell and sent him naked in the street of
San Diego, jerking off and mumbling: "He's the devil! He's the devil!"

2) Twist # 2

Prophet Kony was maligned by a heathen, name of Jason Russell. And the
God of hosts, in order to confound the miscreant for the all world to
see, sent him jerking off in the street, all the while muttering:
"He's the devil! He's the devil!"

Take your pick...

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Three-month house arrest for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales

You'd know right away that times have dramatically changed at the
sound of those cans of worms popping open and the clamor of the
outraged posse zeroing on Staff Sgt. Robert Bales--the "Infidel" and
the financial crook who, drunk and high, went postal in Boondocksistan
on Sunday, March 11.

The once valorous combatant, drunk and high, just snapped... and
blacked out. According to credible testimonies from his comrades, Sgt.
Bales had sneaked out of Camp Belambay and gone on a killing spree in
the nearby village... Body count: 16.

Remember this though: the man has no memory of the deadly event.

Now, fast rewind to... forty-four years ago almost to the day that
deadly Sunday...

On Saturday, March 16, 1968, 2nd Lieutenant William Calley led his
platoon to two hamlets of the village of Son My, in Nam, and ordered
his men to round up civilians, shoot them dead, or burn them alive in
their huts. They were all cong gooks, anyway...

Lieutenant Calley gleefully killed scores of them himself.
Methodically and without blacking out prior or afterward--simply
carrying out orders from his direct superior officer in the chain of
command, as he claimed at his court-martial. Body count: 504 (official
Viatnamese body count).

Now, as we all know, Lieutenant Calley was convicted and sentenced to
life without the possibility of parole.

Then the outrage of the whole country bubbled up and crystallized
around that unjust and unfair sentence meted out against a war hero
who had put himself in harm's way to defend the American way of life,
a rampart against communism!

In such sacred patriotic missions, there are necessarily blunders to
be made. Especially as there was no way of telling "enemy combatants"
from civilians...

Georgia Gov Jimmy Carter was at the forefront of this national
outrage, ordering flags to fly at half mast and asking drivers to keep
their headlights on as a sign of support (maybe Prez Carter will have
the guts to defend Sgt. Bales when he is sentenced to life at his
court-martial). Then other governors followed the high patriotic
standard set by Gov Carter: they also flew their flags at half
mast!...

To make a long story short: Prez Richard Nixon ended up commuting that
iniquitous sentence to... three years and a half of house arrest
and... partially pardoned Lieutenant Calley!

The current POTUS ought to follow that precedent in the case of Sgt. Bales.

Why not?

It's not like Sgt. Bales came up with the silly COIN surge project in
Afghanistan, a country that has proved this particular historical
constant for the past 2,500 years, as someone pointed out a few years
ago: no foreign expeditionary forces have ever won or will ever win a
war there! Period!

These guys are the wrong people to mess with!

Notwithstanding the dogmatic assertion of Prez Obama to the effect that
that historical law amounts to a "false reading of history," as he
claimed in a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009 (see my post of
December 2, 2009 for a counter-argument).

Just as his victims, Sgt. Bales is likewise a victim of politicians'
doggedness, short-sightedness, and stupidity.

After all, the real
blood-thirsty war-mongers who should give denizens the heebie-jeebies
are politicians!

By the way, American politicians treat their fighting men and women
with utter contempt--no matter what empty mantras they usually blurt
out at patriotic pageants...

Just take a look at the monthly paycheck of Sgt. Bales, who was under
heavy financial pressure, we are told, and compare it to the paycheck
of a mercenary working in Afghanistan for an outfit like the company
"formerly known as Blackwater"--and you'd realize that those politicos
don't care about all those ghost soldiers of the empire!

Besides, those mercenaries operate with total impunity in war theaters.

Then, what kind of double or triple standard is this?

If Lieutenant Calley got three years and a half of house arrest
for the cold-blooded slaying of 400 innocent civilians, and if
Blackwater mercenaries got a slap on the wrist for killing dozens of
non-combatants in Iraq, then why should Sgt. Bales get sentenced to
life or, God forbid!, to death for killing a mere handful of civilians?
In a just world, he should at the most get a three-month house arrest!

Read More

Lubanga 2012 vs. Kony 2012

Thomas Lubanga, a former child army general and molester of Ituri in
northern Democratic Republic of Congo, was found guilty yesterday on
all 3 counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC)
at The Hague. And Congolese hope the sentence would ensure that this
criminal will be out of commission and off the streets of Congo for
the rest of his evil life.

This was not a sexy affair, despite the presence in court of glamorous
Angelina Jolie. Nor was this a "savvy media campain," to borrow
Washington Post's Hayley Tsukayama's phrase to describe what his own
paper's editorial board billed as "the most explosive viral video
phenomenon in history"--yeah!, you guessed right: both superlatives
refer to Invisible Children's "Kony 2012."

At The Hague, it wasn't about "slactivism" but the painstaking piecing
together by the much-criticized ICC prosecution of one of the most
horrendous crime in history: turning kids into killers and zombies.

While there are still Lubanga's associates roaming the hills and the
streets of North Kivu--the name of FARDC Gen Jean-Bosco Ntaganda comes
to mind--this conviction can for now be rightly hailed as one of the
single most dramatic action the international community, often
indifferent to the plight of Congolese, has ever taken on behalf of
the much-maligned people of the DRC.

And it's fitting that Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir should be abuzz with
this "landmark conviction."

The other day a western journo wanted my commenting on "Kony 2012."
And he was somewhat taken aback by the fact that I still had to watch
the "the most explosive viral video phenomenon in history."

Well, truth be told: the damn thing can only be viral in Europe and
North America where people have enough leisure time to play that kind
of games. Not here in Kinshasa, mind you!

For one, it costs more than $3 to watch the half-hour video at a
cybercafe--double that amount if the Internet connection is slow that
day! In a country where the majority of denizens survive on less than
$1 a day, that proposition is simply preposterous.

For the other, "Kony 2012" is a fundraising and marketing tool (and
the raving reviews it got were all about that). And its proxy is
Ugandan kids. Not Congolese kids who, since the long trek of Kony from
Uganda to the jungle of DRC and the Central African Republic, are
these days being killed, maimed, abducted and raped. Nothing new
there: Congolese are generally unfit for sexy black and white, good
vs. evil, linear binary narratives.

Meanwhile in Kinshasa, Radio-Trottoir is unraveling its paradoxical
non-linear fractured and fractal narratives. Some are saying, "Lubanga
out; one more to get out of the picture: Jean-Pierre Bemba!," while
others hotly reject that and point out that the ICC prosecution case
against Bemba is thin, even bare, and not beyond a reasonable
doubt...

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Mudslinging in the Kleptocratic Republic of Gondwana: ex-Premier Adolphe Muzito responds to MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba

Mamane is a Nigerien stand-up comedian who is a comedian in residence
of Radio France Internationale in Paris. Mamane has a mock chronicle
of a fictional African country he calls Republic of Gondwana--so named
after the Precambrian supercontinent--where anything goes, especially
when its mercurial president, aptly called Président-Fondateur, wakes
up on the wrong side of the bed. And these last few days, the DRC is
more and more resembling Mamane's Republic of Gondwana.

Consider the mudslinging now splattering major players within Kabila's
Presidential Majority... just days before a new government is formed.

On Sunday, as my two previous posts have chronicled, the newly
elected Kinois MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba accused former Prime
Minister Adolphe Muzito of grand theft.

On Tuesday, Tshibangu Kalala, Muzito's attorney, called a press
conference to respond to the accusations leveled at the former Premier
by Gécoco. The problem with Kalala's statement is that it lacks
credibility and strength, the two most important characteristics of
robust denial. Furthermore, some of the arguments put forth by
Muzito's lawyer are in fact damning for the former prime
minister--like the one that alleges that one could build a real estate
empire after a career as a civil servant and a politician.

More importantly, there's also the oddness of referring to Muzito
throughout the statement as THE Prime Minister, while he's already
tendered his resignation!

The following is the full statement made by Tshibangu Kalala:

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the media:

Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito, whom I am representing in this case,
charged me to make, on his behalf, the following statement intended
for national and international public opinion.

For several days now, a public campaign of denigration and defamation,
highly mediatized, has been launched against Prime Minister Adolphe
Muzito by some Congolese political actors.

Respectful of the freedom of expression recognized and extended by the
Constitution and the laws of the DRC to all Congolese, and in his
capacity as head of the government of the Republic, he let the
interested parties quench their hatred and their jealousy, without
doing anything to stop them.

This campaign of destruction of the honor, dignity and reputation of
Prime Minister Muzito reached its climax in the evening of Sunday,
March 11, 2012, when MP [Gérard] Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco had CCTV
television channel broadcast and comment on certain real estate
properties allegedly belonging to my client.

Generally speaking, I should point out that my client has been working
for several years and it is therefore normal that he should own real
estate properties.

Without involving ourselves in controversy at this stage and without
going into any details--details to which Prime Minister will soon
return-- MP Mulumba Nkongolo's statements call for the following
observations:

1) MP Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco, who has appointed himself the
vigilante of the Republic, the witch hunter of the DRC and the teacher
of lessons on public morality in the DRC, didn't provide any proof
evidencing that all the buildings presented to the press belong to Mr.
Muzito and that they were built or renovated with money from public
treasury put to private use;

2) For example, one of the houses shown to the public by Mr. Mulumba
Nkongolo as belonging to the Prime Minister is instead a private
property that belongs to another public personality of the Republic
and that therefore has nothing to do with my client;

3) The house in the neighborhood of Mbanza-Lemba, close to Université
de Kinshasa, and the one in the GB neighborhood, are family properties
bought by my client since 1996, about 16 years ago, well before the
start of his political career, property he has renovated and valorized
right under the noses of all his neighbors;

4) Mr. Adolphe Muzito worked as a Finance Inspector for several years
prior to getting into politics; he was a Member of Parliament for 3
years; a Budget Minister for close to 2 years, and a Prime Minister
for nearly 4 years. (...)

It is therefore normal he should have the personal income to allow him
to enter into an entrepreneurial partnership in a real estate project,
as is the case with many other Congolese in the city of Kinshasa;

5) Mr. Mulumba Nkongolo didn't say, in order to justify his political
combat and his doggedness against Mr. Adolphe Muzito, whether the
latter is the sole Congolese to own a ranch in the suburb of Kinshasa.

Mr. Adolphe Muzito calls the particular attention of the public on the
moment chosen by Mr. Mulumba Nkongolo and his backers hiding in the
dark--since it's obvious that Mr. Mulumba aka Gécoco doens't carry out
alone his diabolical scheme--to launch this cruel campaign of
destruction of a political adversary, and on the violence of attacks
targeting him.

The chosen moment and the intent of this campaign are not innocent, to
the extent that had Mr. Mulumba Gécoco's intention been to defend
public interest and to seek the truth, he could have gone to a court
of law to denounce those facts instead of mobilizing the national
press to launch virulent attacks against my client.

It's clearly a machiavellian scheme of political destruction
orchestrated by the political adversaries of the Prime Minister, the
very members of his political family, on the eve of the appointment of
senior members of the institutions of the second legislature that has
just begun, to tarnish his image to the Congolese public's eye, to
politically destabilize him, to prevent him from holding public
office, and thus wreck his political career for good.
MP Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco, having promised to publish in the near
future the list of about a hundred other houses of my client, located
as well here in Kinshasa as overseas, the Prime Minister is very
curious and in great hurry to find out about all these houses
attributed to him and awaits patiently and calmly the publication of
that list.

In light of this situation that gravely soils his honor, his
reputation and his dignity as a human being, a husband and a father
and a high-ranking political actor, the Prime Minister reserves the
right, in the coming days, to file a lawsuit against MP Mulumba
Nkongolo for defamation and damaging imputations in a court of law.

It should be stressed here that MP Mulumba Nkongolo has engaged in the
production of unlawful acts of serious gravity, not within and in
front of a microphone of his parliamentary assembly in the course of
his mandate, but on television shows, that is, in the streets of
Kinshasa.

We need to remind people here that the immunity due to parlementarians
wasn't designed for their comfort or their prestige. It wasn't
designed for the impunity of MPs who fall into delinquency and
dishonor their parliamentary function, an important function that
should be exercised with dignity and responsibility by noble people.

We do hope that the parliamentary assembly to which belongs MP Mulumba
Nkongolo will not hesitate to quickly waive his immunity so that he
could be answerable for his acts before the Congolese justice system.

Prime Minister Muzito ends [his statement] by solemnly stating that he
had carried out the high functions entrusted to him by the President
of the Republic with dignity, dedication and a heightened sense of
responsibility. The rest is all but calumny, jealousy, meanness and
tactical moves to eliminate a competent and loyal political rival.

Thank you."

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