{"id":4655,"date":"2010-10-13T00:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T00:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.yolandagranados.com\/crg\/amp-conclave-another-step-towards-2011-2\/"},"modified":"2020-07-13T23:03:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T23:03:31","slug":"amp-conclave-another-step-towards-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/2010\/10\/13\/amp-conclave-another-step-towards-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"The AMP conclave: Another step towards 2011 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator is-style-wide is-core-separator-block\" style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\">\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:52px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n  <div id=\"anchor-nav-position-block_5f0ce83b1b543\" class=\"c-block-anchor-nav-position o-wrapper__inner\" style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px;\">\n    <div class=\"js-anchor-nav-position\"><\/div>\n\n    <div class=\"c-anchor-nav__mobile\">\n      <nav class=\"c-anchor-nav \"><span class=\"c-anchor-nav__heading\"> <\/span><ul class=\"c-anchor-nav__links o-list-bare\"><li class=\"c-anchor-nav__item\"><a href=\"#%20\" class=\"c-anchor-nav__link \"> <\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav>    <\/div>\n  <\/div>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:30px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\" class=\"is-core-paragraph-block has-space-small-mb\">For those who didn&rsquo;t know it: The election season is definitely upon us, even though we are still 13 months away from the polls. After the PPRD&rsquo;s summit in Kisangani in August, it was the presidential AMP coalition&rsquo;s turn to meet at the president&rsquo;s ranch in Kingakati this weekend. The president and his entourage are intent on preserving their broad-based coalition, so they took this opportunity to discuss electoral strategy, constitutional revision and the composition of the national electoral commission (CENI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:30px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\" class=\"is-core-paragraph-block has-space-small-mb\">As Alex Engwete points out in his nice <a href=\"http:\/\/alexengwete.blogspot.com\/2010\/10\/kingakati-conclave-and-plight-of-duo.html\">posting<\/a>, the conclave took place amid a lot of mudslinging between Kabila&rsquo;s camp and prominent former allies such as Kudura Kasongo (former presidential spokesperson turned TV presenter &ndash; see <a href=\"http:\/\/alexengwete.blogspot.com\/2010\/10\/reinvention-of-kudura-kasongo-former.html\">here<\/a> for the bizarre transformation of one of the most hardline Kabila enforcers to a critic) and Vital Kamerhe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:30px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\" class=\"is-core-paragraph-block has-space-small-mb\">The result of the meeting was to resolutely seal (of course) the unity of the AMP coalition and to confirm that there would only be one presidential candidate: Joseph Kabila. This is important insofar as several of the coalition members had proposed their own candidate for the 2006 polls, such as Mbusa Nyamwisi (RCD-ML), and the last thing Kabila needs at the moment is for more people to enter the race, which could prevent him from winning the all-important first round of elections in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:30px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\" class=\"is-core-paragraph-block has-space-small-mb\">The meeting also brought up the issue of constitutional revision. According to Kinshasa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.africatime.com\/rdc\/nouvelle.asp?no_nouvelle=555483&amp;no_categorie=\">newspapers<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.7sur7.cd\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=11036%3A-amp--les-secrets-de-kingakati&amp;catid=11%3Aforum-des-as&amp;lang=fr\">here<\/a>), they recommended 8 articles of the current constitution for revision:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"is-core-list-block\" style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\"><li>Article 226, which calls for the creation of 26 provinces out of the current 11 (Kinshasa + 10) within 36 months of the installation of the elected institutions. Note that they do not want to call into question the creation of new provinces (the so-called &laquo;&nbsp;d&eacute;coupage), as that would be unconstitutional, they just want to change the deadline for doing so (the last one lapsed in May 2010). So this is a sly way of buying more time;<\/li><li>Article 71, which says that the second round of presidential elections has to be held within 15 days of the first round of elections. I agree, this provision never made much sense, as it takes at least that long just to print the new ballots and distribute them &ndash; last time they had two months;<\/li><li>Article 149: I haven&rsquo;t seen exactly what they want to change about this, but this could be dangerous, as article cements the independence of the courts. Any change to this would be unconstitutional;<\/li><li>Articles 197&amp;198: These articles regulate the functioning of provincial parliaments, which have been extremely unruly for the past four years &ndash; the newspapers in Kinshasa suggest that they want to change &laquo;&nbsp;the management of crises in the provincial institutions.&nbsp;&raquo; Hmmm.<\/li><li>Also: Articles 126 &amp; 110. You can read all of them in the constitution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presidentrdc.cd\/constitution.html\">here<\/a>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:30px;padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px\" class=\"is-core-paragraph-block has-space-small-mb\">Almost as notable as what they brought up were the clauses that they have not recommended for changing (if we can rely on the Kinshasa papers): presidential term limits, which would have Kabila out of office after another five year term; and the proportional representation electoral system, which the presidency has wanted to change to have a more manageable parliament.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For those who didn&rsquo;t know it: The election season is definitely upon us, even though we are still 13 months away from the polls. After the PPRD&rsquo;s summit in Kisangani&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.congoresearchgroup.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}