The New Head of the Electoral Commission: Mulunda Ngoy?

According to sources in the national assembly, the members of the new national electoral commission have been nominated. It looks like the new body will be led by a close associate of Joseph Kabila and a Methodist minister, Daniel Mulunda Ngoy.

According to the law on the CENI, the majority in the national assembly gets to nominate 4 members and the opposition. It's a strange system, as it explicitly encourages the politicization of the body - many of the members of the commission are active politicians, as opposed to during the previous body (CEI), in which, at least nominally, the chair was politically independent and came from civil society.

So who has been nominated?

I haven't seen the names in the press yet, but the main man is reported to be Daniel Mulunda Ngoy, who is also favored to become the first president of the CENI. He is the former spiritual advisor to Laurent and Joseph Kabila and the head of the controversial PAREC non-profit organization that has organized a bunch of weapons-for-cash and weapons-for-bicycle disarmament campaigns throughout the country.

Mulunda Ngoy is very close to Joseph Kabila - he was a member of the government's delegation to the Sun City peace negotiations in 2002-2003 and a founding member of the PPRD. According to a former minister in Laurent Kabila's government, he was sent to help organize an alliance with former Habyarimana officers (ex-FAR) in 1998, and he was sent to Europe by Joseph Kabila in 2006 to organize the repatriation of former Mobutu officers. In other words, a close confidant of the president who is relatively independent of the various political parties, but deeply loyal to the president. He is also a Methodist minister who was a leader of the All Africa Conference of Churches.

Two of the other three commissioners nominated by the majority are technocrats, people who were in the commission before. The third is a member of Gizenga's PALU party. If true, this is a bit strange - none of the other members of the presidential coalition has a representation?

Who has the opposition named?

Apparently, they have divided their nominations along the three parliamentary groups they have: One for the MLC, Senator Jacques Ndjoli; one for the Christian Democrats of Gilbert Kiakwama, Carole Kabanga; and one for the the Order of Republican Democrats, Laurent Ndaya.

The Agony of Doing Business in the Congo

The World Bank put out its year "Doing Business" report where it reports on how easy it is to start and operate a business around the world.

First, the good news. The DR Congo moved up four places to #175 out of 183. Break out the champagne. Seriously, though, the government was congratulated for having made improvements in the ease of registering property and starting a business. They even won the prize for the most improvements in obtaining construction permits.

Now for the bad news. Seriously - 175th? That's pretty terrible. Let's see how easy it is to make a profit in the Congo. If you pay all of your taxes, you will be paying 340% of your profits in taxes, a process that will take you 8 full weeks (working 40 hours/week) to do. In other words, nobody can even come to making a profit if you want to be legal - the government has institutionalized tax fraud.

Other factoids are: In order to enforce a contract through the law, it will take you an average of almost two years and cost you 1.5 times the amount of the claim.

Pretty atrocious. The government has made some improvements, this is true, over the past years. But apparently it's been a drop in the bucket.

Stories to watch

Some of the stories I haven't been blogging on but should have:

• The South Korean government is considering a minerals-for-infrastructure deal with the Congolese government worth $1 billion. Korean companies would build a deep water port on the Atlantic and a waste water treatment plant for Kinshasa in return for copper mines, including the Musoshi mine in Katanga. Investors seem undeterred....
• The United Nations is investigating the reported rape of 650 women who were expelled from Angola since September. While some reports seem to indicate that they were detained and abused in Angola, the UN has said they it does not know where they were abused nor by whom. What I cannot understand is Minister of Information Lambert Mende's position: ""We're not informed. We don't know, these figures are not confirmed," he said. "There are expulsions, perhaps there are rapes but we have received no complaints and we don't want to launch a dossier." He has outdone himself.
• On the Angolan front, its ambassador to the Congo announced this past week at a press conference that the Congolese government has submitted their dispute over offshore oil rights to the UN for arbitration. According to this article, Angola pumps 500,000 barrels/day from the disputed area - around 30% of its total production.
  

A Series of Scandals Embroil Security Forces in the Congo

There have been several scandals in the Congo over the past month that have gone more or less unreported by the foreign press but that have had a large impact domestically, all involving abuses by the security forces.

First the Armand Tungulu affair. Tungulu was a Congolese who had been living in Belgium for many years. He returned home and was arrested on September 29 for throwing rocks at a presidential motorcade. On October 2, the government announced his death, saying he had committed suicide with a pillow in his jail cell - this provoked outrage, as there was little motive for a suicide and because Congolese prisons are not known for their pillows.

The Congolese government proceeded to arrest witnesses of Tungulu's arrest and defy a Belgian court, which ruled on October 11 that Kinshasa would have to return Tungulu to Belgium or pay 25,000 euros a day in damages. Other countries, including the United States, joined in voicing their concern. The inimitable Minister of Information Lambert Mende castigated the Belgian court and government for interfering in the affairs of a sovereign country.

This has all had more of an impact on the population of Kinshasa than the recent news from the Kivus. All the more surprising that the Tungulu's family in Kinshasa (his widow lives in Belgium) would drop their suit against the Congolese government this past week; many suspect pressure from the Congolese government.

The second incident, also involving the presidential guard in Kinshasa, took place on October 19. Apparently, a traffic cop at the Socimat intersection in downtown Kinshasa did not respect the approaching motorcade of Zoé Kabila, the president's brother, cutting off their path as they were approaching. Some members of the presidential guard who were escorting Zoé jumped down and beat up several policemen. Apparently, Zoé was himself outraged by his guard's behavior and paid for the policemen's treatment. Two guards were later arrested. But many Kinois were upset by the incident, which reminded some of Kongulu, Mobutu's notorious son, nicknamed "Saddam" for his abuses, and wondered why Zoé was being protected by such muscle in the first place.

Lastly, on October 12, riots broke out in Likasi, in Katanga province, where pupils went to the mayor's office to protest several traffic accidents that had affected them. The mayor reportedly said: "If you are educated, go home, if you are dogs you can stay," and had some of their parents arrested. This prompted riots that ransacked several state buildings and resulted in the death of at least one student.

Many Congolese can relate more to this kind of arrogance on the part of public officials and security forces than with the violence in the remote Kivus. These incidents just go to show how tense the situation is throughout the country and how much work Kabila will have to do before elections next year if he is to have a chance of fairly winning the polls.

Polling in the Congo

We are still a long way away from elections in the Congo (November 2011 is the chimerical date), but, as any Congo Siasa enthusiast will know, there are already a bunch of contenders. See here for two short Jeune Afrique interviews with Vital Kamerhe and Etienne Tshisekedi from last month - both are good speakers, Kamerhe more so than Tshisekedi, who looks a bit tired, but who also has a much longer track record of a serious political opponent, ready to sacrifice a lot. Kamerhe is an unknown in that regard - is he launching an opposition movement "pour aller jusqu'au bout," or is this a negotiation tactic with Kabila?

In any case, Kamerhe implies (without saying it - "let Congolese speculate positively") that he will be a candidate in 2011 and that he has met both Tshisekedi and Bemba recently.

So who is popular in the polls? "What polls?" would be the appropriate answer, I think. There is not much to go by in the Congo - BERCI, perhaps the most reputable pollster in the country, hasn't been heard of much in recent years. Polls are usually commissioned by the press or political parties. The former are too poor in the Congo (circulation is probably no more than 10,000-15,000 for the most popular ones in Kinshasa, although statistics vary), and political parties have not yet adopted polling as a useful tactic. After all, a good polls is expensive, as you have to get a decent sample of the whole country and avoid selection bias by just selecting phone owners or city dwellers.

Nonetheless, the pollster Institut les Points published a poll in the newspaper "Le Soft" a few days ago that asked voters who they would vote for in a presidential election. It's a classic "Le Soft" piece - the newspaper once commissioned a poll from the same institute asking who the most popular newspaper in the country was - surprise, surprise, it was "Le Soft," which is owned by former Mobutist and RCD minister Kin Key Mulumba.

Anyway, for whatever it's worth (it may not be much), the poll ranks Joseph Kabila first with 27% of the vote, Tshisekedi second with 22% and Kamerhe third with 5%. Say what? That totals up to 54% - who did the other 46% vote for? If my math is right, and no other candidate got more than 3rd placed Kamerhe, there must have been at least eleven other candidates or a large percentage voting for nobody.

The second poll that I would recommend looking at was conducted by the popular diaspora website Congo Mikili, who have a video here explaining the results. I like their emphasis on how "scientific" the poll is, and therefore the number cannot be contested ("others may tell you otherwise, but this is the scientific truth). Hmmm...it was a poll on a website, taken overwhelmingly by people outside of the Congo - most voters came from France, Canada, US, UK and Belgium. The words "selection bias" come to mind, especially as Congo Mikili has a pretty heavy anti-Kabila tone.

In any case, Tshisekedi was surprisingly popular for leader who boycotted the 2006 elections (to the dismay of many) and took the crown with 30%, JP Bemba is runner-up with 14%, Moise Katumbi got 12% and "No leader" got 11% - i.e. "I don't like any of the above options" - and Joseph Kabila got 8%.

Are foreign companies guilty of war crimes for pillaging the Congo?

A report was released last week by the Open Society Justice Initiative, penned by University of British Columbia professor James Stewart, on "Corporate War Crimes," a primer on how pillage can be tried as a war crime.

Interesting and contentious stuff. Apparently The Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prohibit pillage, and most domestic jurisdictions and international courts include laws against pillage.

But what Stewart is getting at is more than just soldiers running amok on the battlefield. He wants to know whether corporations can be held accountable for wrongfully acquiring property through complicity with armed force. The clearest precedents for this were during World War II tribunals - IG Farben, a German company, was charged with exploiting the military occupation of France to obtain property without the proper consent of the lawful owner. That is pretty straight-forward pillage. Stewart goes on to show, however, that Farben and other companies were also found guilty of having received stolen goods, i.e. buying property that had been unlawfully acquired by a third party.

In the case of the Congo, Stewart argues that companies/countries could be found guilty of pillage of warehouses and stocks (as with the AFDL/Rwandan invasion of 1996) but also for buying minerals that were mined outside of legal concessions or in violation of Congolese law. One could see, also, how his argument could extend to any minerals mined through forced labor or even tainted by extortion or similar abuse.

Apparently the ICC does not have jurisdiction to try corporate crimes, but national courts do. Also, it will be difficult to prove mens rea, especially for buying stolen goods, although some jurisdictions are pretty lenient about this.

Seems to be a long way off in the Congo, but interesting stuff.

The Emperor Said So

A bunch of Congolese politicians have recently been courting Jean-Pierre Bemba, the head of the Congolese opposition who is now in jail at the ICC in The Hague. First it was Vital Kamerhe, the former Kabila ally turned opposition politician. Now apparently José Makila, the former governor of Equateur who has clashed with the leadership of the MLC, has visited the disgraced leader in prison.

Both Kamerhe and Makila say that they walked away with Bemba's endorsement. Bemba himself, however, has told some close friends that he hasn't given anyone an official endorsement for anything, and that people are exaggerating and misinterpreting what he meant. Of course, he being in prison, it is difficult for people to contact him to figure out what really happened. And in any case, he is apparently prohibited from getting involved in Congolese politics by the ICC - the MLC had to write a letter to the ICC when he first put in prison saying that he would stay out of politics. Oh well.

This reminds me of a story that Paul Kagame liked to tell to the RCD leadership, when they were still based in Goma during the rebellion (1998-2003).

Once, frustrated by their shenanigans, he told the RCD executive council the story of an emperor who had a wonderful advisor. As a reward for his loyal service, one day he told his advisor that he would fulfill any wish he had. The advisor told him: ‘I have but one simple request. When I want to tell you something, can I whisper it in your ear?’ The king, dumbfounded by the modest request, granted it immediately. From then on, whenever there was an important decision to take, the advisor would go up to the king and whisper banalities in his ear – he talked about the weather, or what the cook would make for dinner – and the king would nod. The advisor would then go and tell the court that the king had agreed with his suggestion regarding the momentous decision.

Kagame then thundered, wagging his finger. “Some of you fools come and see me here in Kigali, just to say hello and ask about my family! Then you go and tell the rest that Kagame agrees with your decision on this or that.” He banged his fist on the table. “I will have none of this!”

(The story was also told of Emperor Haile Selassie. Origin unknown. But very appropriate.)