The swearing-in of new members of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) transition government, aimed at ending nearly five years of war and taking the country through to free elections, was suspended on Monday, without explanation from the authorities.
Shortly after Honorius Kisimba Ngoy had taken over the justice portfolio from Ngele Masudi, the outgoing minister told his successor that the swearing-in ceremony had been delayed.
Masudi gave no explanation for the delay, and did not say when the ceremony was to be held.
Journalists in the DRC capital Kinshasa reported similar delays, announced under almost identical circumstances at other ministries, but were unable to obtain an official explanation for the postponement of the ceremony.
”In all cases, it was the deputy director of the office of President [Joseph] Kabila, Samba Kaputo, who told those concerned,” one of the new ministers said.
It as impossible to reach Kaputo or any of his colleagues by phone on Monday afternoon.
Each of the main players in DRC’s long and arduous peace process — two major rebel groups, the government in Kinshasa and the political opposition — has been given seven ministerial portfolios and four deputy ministries.
All were due to be sworn in on Monday, to allow the new government to get down to the nuts and bolts job of restoring peace in DRC, riven by war since August 1998, when the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), backed by Rwanda, and Uganda-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) rose up against then president Laurent Kabila’s government.
In theory, any delay to the swearing-in ceremony has to be announced by the committee following up the creation of the transition government, formed under a peace pact signed in December last year.
But on Monday, the follow-up committee had not issued a statement to say the ceremony had been delayed, and spokesperson Athanase Matenda could not be contacted.
Twenty-seven of the 34 ministers appointed on June 30 by President Joseph Kabila were in Kinshasa and ”ready for the handing over” of power, one of them said.
Only the RCD’s representatives in the new government were absent, having complained on Sunday that United Nations authorities in the eastern city of Goma had failed to supply sufficient planes to transport its members — 11 ministers and deputy ministers, plus the new government’s secretary general — along with their 150-strong retinue.
The United Nation’s observer mission provided a 17-seat aircraft but the RCD insisted that each delegate be accompanied by 15 bodyguards, as stipulated in an agreement on security during the transition period.
The transition government will be led by Kabila, who inherited the post on his father Laurent’s assassination in January 2001. It is tasked with taking DRC through to its first democratic elections since those held after independence from Belgium in 1960.
Upwards of three million people, mostly civilians are estimated to have died in the war, either as a direct consequence of hostilities or from starvation and disease.
Despite the December peace pact taking effect in April, fighting has continued to rage in DRC’s Ituri region, where hundreds of people have been killed in ethnic slaughters, and in the Kivu region, where the RCD and one of its splinter groups fought for control of key towns. – Sapa-AFP