Ferdinand Kambere: The Return of Raïs Disrupts Power Holders
Several top officials of the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), including Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, Aubin Minaku, and Ferdinand Kambere, were questioned for several hours on Monday, March 10th, at the military prosecutor’s office in Kinshasa Gombe to shed light on the situation. According to Mr. Kambere, the military justice system wanted to clarify Minaku’s statement that “the leader said the time for clandestine actions is over.” The deputy permanent secretary of the PPRD presented these series of invitations as a persecution against the opposition, suggesting that the current regime is afraid of Joseph Kabila’s return to power. “We had already understood that it was persecution, that the return of the Raïs (Joseph Kabila) was bothering those in power and this reorganization of the party. They who thought that the PPRD was dead with the rupture, with the organization of the elections in which the PPRD and the FCC did not participate. They realize that it is a party that still has a foothold in society,” declared Ferdinand Kambere.
Kambere asserted that the PPRD demonstrated before the military prosecutor’s office through its officials that it has no connection to the AFC, as Felix Tshisekedi has repeatedly claimed, and that it cannot in any way transform into an insurrectional movement. “We are a democratic party, engaged in the fight to reclaim power through democratic means. No action against the law has been taken, it is useless to imagine what we are doing. It has nothing to do with an insurrectional movement,” he added.
A Clash of Political Titans
Hours before the arrival of the PPRD officials at the military prosecutor’s office, the Common Front for Congo (FCC), Joseph Kabila’s political platform, strongly criticized this move by the military justice system, describing it as “another attempt by the tyrannical power in Kinshasa to intimidate and silence PPRD members,” “who have chosen not submission, but resistance to dictatorship.” The FCC points out that these series of invitations come at a time when Joseph Kabila is facing baseless accusations.
The former president’s camp, repeatedly accused by Felix Tshisekedi of being behind the AFC led by Corneille Nangaa, denounces the recent statement by the Minister of Justice affirming the complicity of the military justice system’s invitees with the AFC/M23. They believe that these allegations by Constant Mutamba violate the right to the presumption of innocence of the individuals invited, guaranteed by the constitution. Samyr LUKOMBO.