Congo’s opposition leader Tshisekedi’s UDPS party says he did not call for violence ahead of Nov 28 elections
Special to USAfricaonline.com and CLASSmagazine (Houston)
USAfrica: Etienne Tshisekedi, the key opposition leader in the November 28, 2011 scheduled elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, second largest country in Africa, has denied through his political party that he was calling for violence ahead of polls.
“The statements by (party) president Tshisekedi are far from being a call to violence. We are a non-violent organisation…. It is a cry of alarm and frustration,” argues Jacquemin Shabani, secretary-general of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS).
Tshisekedi’s controversial comments on Friday November 11, 2011 raised eyebrows, after his supporters had a violent showdown with supporters of the ruling party of President Joseph Kabila. Kabila was in Katanga seeking reelection votes.
The 78-year-old veteran of Congo politics and former Prime Minister under former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had
said that “My way of educating the Congolese people is to remove the fear in their heads by mobilising them to terrorise those who have terrorised us for so long…. This is not a call for violence…. Any dictatorship is based on fear… The Congolese man must shake the fear and be more self-confident.”
He also issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the Kabila government to free “all our fighters” from three state prisons, or else he will call upon the UDPS supporters to “smash Makala prison” located in Kinshasa in order to “to free by force our fighters arrested arbitrarily.”
Meanwhile, a new opening to more controversy for the Congo (DRC) November 28, 2011 elections has been opened by Congo’s deputy head of the electoral commission Jacques Djoli who has hinted unless the commission had 100% readiness the November elections may be moved forward.
He said in Brussels (in Europe) on Monday that although he was “99.9%” sure the the elections will hold as scheduled, he hinted that “if we are not ready, we will ask for a few days and organise the elections on December 2 or 5”.
