The Congolese Electoral Process Calendar,Has been Released

The electoral process which has just been crossed by the CENI that some, in their impatience, have long accused of bad faith, duplicity, double language or to make the game of a power suspected, wrongly, to have a visceral inclination to slip. This calendar, which is indeed intended to meet the legitimate expectations of the Congolese people and to put an end to the itching of the political actors and to certain requirements of some foreign decision-makers can count on an unfailing support of the Government, and this, although it is the subject of comments in various senses, sharp criticism even attacks in good standing.

PRESS STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA, SPOKESPERSON FOR THE GOVERNMENT

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Ladies and gentlemen of the press,

Only one point will be the subject of our communication today: the recent publication of the electoral calendar.

On Sunday, November 5, 2017, the Independent National Electoral Commission released the full calendar of presidential, legislative, provincial, urban, municipal and local elections, setting the course and the state of democratisation of the public institutions of our country. Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is for the Government of the Republic a decisive step of the electoral process which has just been crossed by the CENI that some, in their impatience, have long accused of bad faith, duplicity, double language or to make the game of a power suspected, wrongly, to have a visceral inclination to slip. This calendar, which is indeed intended to meet the legitimate expectations of the Congolese people and to put an end to the itching of the political actors and to certain requirements of some foreign decision-makers can count on an unfailing support of the Government, and this, although it is the subject of comments in various senses, sharp criticism even attacks in good standing.

Like the vast majority of our compatriots, I would like, on behalf of the Government, to welcome this long-awaited and long-awaited timetable.

A few political actors, including the so-called radical opposition, the very ones who screamed loudly for threats, the publication without delay of the electoral calendar were wind up when it was done, against the said calendar they have donned, without even taking the time to examine it, all sorts of qualifiers which are in fact the manifestation of a certain disarray. For some this calendar would be “fanciful”, for others, it is “unrealistic” or “non-consensual”.
Some call the Congolese who massively cooperated with the CENI to launch the electoral process by participating in the success of the operation of revision of the electoral file to scuttle the said process by a boycott of the electoral calendar immediately published. Instead, they propose hollow projects for publishing an “alternative” calendar. Others said most seriously that the CENI initiative was not constitutional. Concerning this serious accusation of non-conformity with the Constitution launched against the electoral centre, and insofar as its authors do not claim to have replaced the Constitutional Court, they should at least take the trouble to address in the required forms, to the latter, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the only body competent to say the law in this case.

The Government wishes to point out that, unlike the rants spread to the four winds by the falsifiers of our history, in a democracy, the primary function of an election is not to dismiss a leader (s). The essential function of an election is to allow the people, the primary sovereign to freely choose a leader (s). In this, the elections we are waiting for must be perceived first and foremost as a democratic apotheosis, a real “people’s festival”. Those who see it as an occasion here and there to have an opportunity of settling accounts or depriving their adversaries or the leaders of the electoral administration of sleep are wrong.

Elections are also not comparable to a school assignment, as a political actor of the opposition, who has described on the airwaves of a French media the calendar made public by the CENI of “bad schoolboy duty” »; as if our electoral centre was in search of good grades with some unknown teacher, like the political actor in question and his friends who spend most of their time begging for the satisfaction of their masters.

For our part, we are satisfied that the CENI has assumed responsibility and that it has not let itself be infantilized despite the many internal and external pressures that it has reported while taking into account in the measure possible.

Faced with this torrent of comments, sometimes irrational positions and attempts to challenge the independence of the INEC yet enshrined in the Constitution and laws of the Republic; While reaffirming the principle of freedom of opinion recognized for all Congolese, the Government intends to do its part to ensure that this realistic electoral calendar drawn up by the only authorized body taking into account all the requirements and constraints that have been recalled so honest and transparent is scrupulously respected.

In this regard, we can not accept with gaiety of heart to see our country, the DRC practically alone being the object of a veritable avalanche of external pressures in its electoral process; pressures that we know are essentially dictated by the lust that arises from, among other things, its immense strategic natural resources. After rubber, copper and coltan respectively, it is our cobalt reserves that are worth to us these malicious and incapacitating intrusions of which we ask only to be dispensed once and for all. The Congolese analysts that you are, dear friends of the press should devote some of their thoughts to this real dysfunction of inter-state relations that have always placed our country in the sights of self-proclaimed masters of the world.

An electoral poll like the one that is in the making in our country must be considered as the counterpart of a new birth: the prospect of getting or keeping the business of the leaders that a people chooses freely. Hence, the interest of going there with serenity and enthusiasm.
The Government is urging all stakeholders in the electoral process to take more responsibility at this very moment when our country is at a crossroads. We have understood that after taking the advice of everyone in the country and listening to its external partners, the Commission has decided to be part of an optimistic plan that results in a relaxation of the critical path that calls for a loyal collaboration of all parties involved in the process.

The full implementation of this calendar is in line with the legitimate interests of the Congolese people who have demonstrated their political maturity throughout the past few years, during which they have had to overcome challenges that are far more difficult and painful. A maturity which contrasts unfortunately with the real blindness or composition of some political actors whose project of society can be summed up in a constellation of excessive egocentric ambitions which pushes them to destabilising provocations all the time by launching Byzantine quarrels on everything and nothing, even on problems for which solutions exist.

They mark a morbid preference for conflicting responses to societal problems that require consensual solutions and are illustrated by a leap forward in pyromaniac and apocalyptic postures under the influence of agents of influence whose objective hardly the veil is to weaken our country by using the political inconsistency of some of us.

The Government urges the Congolese people to be vigilant in the face of these suicidal errors in order to preserve and consolidate the achievements of the young Congolese democracy, despite the pace of its evolution, considered too slow for some. As an old Chinese saying goes, a journey of 1,000 kilometres always begins with the first step.

Our compatriots of the so-called radical opposition and their friends in civil society should never lose sight of the hecatombs in which the internal tensions provoked by the instigation of ill-intentioned foreign agents of influence since periods of slavery have led us. , colonialism and even after the accession of our country to national and international sovereignty. Our duty to all, beyond our differences, is to adopt a citizen and republican attitude towards the difficulties our nation is facing.

In this case, rather than instructing a real trial of intent against the CENI, which is in charge of organizing the electoral operations in our country, the political class and the civil society as a whole must bring it to the extent possible, the support it needs to carry out its mission because since 2006, we have freely resolved that only the ballot box gives the popular anointing and the legitimacy necessary to participate in the management of public affairs . No one has the right to throw away this basic achievement of our tumultuous history.
It is difficult to understand that after having made the publication of the electoral calendar its main battle for months, the announcement of this calendar could become for some the object of disputes as bitter and completely unjustified. The maneuvers tending to undermine the electoral calendar published Sunday by the CENI undertaken by those who had vehemently opposed the two previous can be considered in this respect as an illegitimate attempt to confiscate the sovereignty of the people for the benefit of endless special arrangements for a fair and balanced distribution of power that most Congolese no longer want to hear.

It is also the time and the opportunity for those of our external partners in good faith (there are some) who would have doubted at one time or another the will of the Congolese national institutions to make possible the holding of the elections and who have conditioned their support for the publication of an electoral calendar, to demonstrate from now on that their solidarity often declared with the Democratic Republic of Congo is not factitious nor interested or conditioned by the abandonment by our people of any or part of its sovereignty.

The roadmap with the objective constraints that the CENI has delivered to the public on Sunday night needs an accompaniment without false evasions from all the stakeholders.

It is important for everyone to do their part so that, for the first time, thanks to free, transparent and peaceful elections, a peaceful and civilized transition of power takes place in this country that no longer intends to relive the atrocious drama of political neutralization. followed by the assassination of Patrice Emery Lumumba, elected legitimate Congolese in 1961.

This is why the Government takes note of the commonsense communique issued for this purpose by the US State Department, which has welcomed the publication of the CENI electoral calendar and invited all stakeholders and the Congolese people whole to the sacred union in order to bring this historical process to a successful conclusion.

A statement that, by the way, goes in the same direction as the US ambassador’s strong statement to the UN that some in some politically inconsistent political groups had naively mistaken for the whip-mother, he a few weeks ago when his visit to our country was announced.

We can never say it enough, the collective destiny of this country is in our hands, and our hands alone, and failing to be accountable to our own responsibilities, we will all be, as long as we are, collectively judged by our patriotism.

I will end my remarks today by confirming that the publication by the CENI of a rational global timetable for the holding of all the ballots on which we are speaking today is the expression of the strong determination of a man, the President of the Republic Joseph Kabila Kabange, Guarantor of the Constitution who, against all odds, was able to remain legalistic until the end. This calendar is in itself a stinging denial to ominous birds who predicted a retreat of the DRC on the path of democratisation of its public institutions that it deliberately planned. It is clear that this is not the case.

I thank you for your kind attention.

Lambert MENDE OMALANGA