After June 30
[I wrote this a few days ago but my internet connection has been terrible for the past week or so. I finally got to post some pictures of the Luebo runway…]
Things were mostly quiet on June 30 in Kinshasa. I did hear about a serious traffic accident, rumored to have been election-related (involving young campaigners), but I am not sure. And eleven or twelve people were killed in a confrontation between police and a Kongo nationalist group in Matadi (a port town in Bas Congo, about 200 miles away). Negotiations between government leaders and the opposition began as well. There were demonstrations on June 29, but on June 30, a strong military presence here kept most people, including me, at home. That seemed to be the military’s plan. The few people I know who did move around the city did so surprisingly easily. And by July 1, things were still quiet and people were moving around in more-or-less usual fashion.
There are campaign banners everywhere in the city--most for parliamentary deputies. I know several candidates; it is a pretty exciting time. The presidential race is hard to read here in Kinshasa because Kabila is not at all popular, though he has a lot of support in the east. I suspect by the election we will see a more-or-less two-candidate race with the major parties and candidates lining up behind Kabila or his strongest challenger, who will almost certainly be Bemba. The alliances will be relatively predictable, even for a novice to the DRC scene like me. We are starting to see some of this with Pay Pay, a former head of the national bank, backing the president. Keep in mind--all of my thoughts on this process are extremely impressionistic and unscientific.
Surprisingly, the university has remained open. I suspect they are trying to push ahead so that they can finish the academic year before the end of July. Typically during the campaign season, which officially began last week, the university would be entirely shut down. The students are considered one of the more radical opposition political factions in the country, and a shut-down is believed to counter that energy (and it is easy to imagine the strategy backfiring--it has backfired in the past). Closing the school increases animosity and further radicalizes the students. For now it is encouraging to see that they have decided to remain open rather than peremptorily close the doors.
The New York Times has continued its coverage with this article reporting from the eastern part of the country (about a thousand miles away from me). (If you ever have trouble with any of these links, let me know and I can try to email you the article.)
The Times gives me a good sense of what kind of US media coverage, if any, there is of this part of the world. I would be interested to hear if folks have come across other reports.
Things were mostly quiet on June 30 in Kinshasa. I did hear about a serious traffic accident, rumored to have been election-related (involving young campaigners), but I am not sure. And eleven or twelve people were killed in a confrontation between police and a Kongo nationalist group in Matadi (a port town in Bas Congo, about 200 miles away). Negotiations between government leaders and the opposition began as well. There were demonstrations on June 29, but on June 30, a strong military presence here kept most people, including me, at home. That seemed to be the military’s plan. The few people I know who did move around the city did so surprisingly easily. And by July 1, things were still quiet and people were moving around in more-or-less usual fashion.
There are campaign banners everywhere in the city--most for parliamentary deputies. I know several candidates; it is a pretty exciting time. The presidential race is hard to read here in Kinshasa because Kabila is not at all popular, though he has a lot of support in the east. I suspect by the election we will see a more-or-less two-candidate race with the major parties and candidates lining up behind Kabila or his strongest challenger, who will almost certainly be Bemba. The alliances will be relatively predictable, even for a novice to the DRC scene like me. We are starting to see some of this with Pay Pay, a former head of the national bank, backing the president. Keep in mind--all of my thoughts on this process are extremely impressionistic and unscientific.
Surprisingly, the university has remained open. I suspect they are trying to push ahead so that they can finish the academic year before the end of July. Typically during the campaign season, which officially began last week, the university would be entirely shut down. The students are considered one of the more radical opposition political factions in the country, and a shut-down is believed to counter that energy (and it is easy to imagine the strategy backfiring--it has backfired in the past). Closing the school increases animosity and further radicalizes the students. For now it is encouraging to see that they have decided to remain open rather than peremptorily close the doors.
The New York Times has continued its coverage with this article reporting from the eastern part of the country (about a thousand miles away from me). (If you ever have trouble with any of these links, let me know and I can try to email you the article.)
The Times gives me a good sense of what kind of US media coverage, if any, there is of this part of the world. I would be interested to hear if folks have come across other reports.
posted by irad at 9:47 AM
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