DR Congo Senate Backs Down on Electoral Bill Behind Violence
After days of deadly protests, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Senate backed down Friday on a hotly-contested electoral bill enabling President Joseph Kabila to extend his hold on power.
Senators voted unanimously to amend the bill, already passed by the lower house of parliament last weekend, by dropping a provision tying 2016 presidential and legislative elections to a census expected to be years from completion.
The vote came after days of bloody confrontations between protestors and police in the capital city Kinshasa, where rights groups say as many as 42 people were killed this week.
Vital Kamerhe, president of the third largest opposition party Union for the Congolese Nation (UNC), said he was "satisfied" by the senate vote, but refused to "cry victory."
A joint commission of the Senate and National Assembly must still meet in an effort to reach a consensus on the amended bill. If lawmakers cannot come to an agreement, the National Assembly would have the final word.
As during the violence earlier this week, the army remained in place around the parliament building. But calm had returned to Kinshasa and Goma, the main city in the northeast of the country, where a protester was killed Thursday.
Opponents of Kabila, who is constitutionally mandated to step down in 2016 when his second term ends, say he is trying to cling to power.
The government has acknowledged that the census that is supposed to begin this year could delay elections, while regional analysts and diplomats have estimated the process could take up to three years.
The amended bill says updating the electoral roll ahead of the election will be completed "with respect for the constitutional and legal deadlines set for the organization of presidential, legislative, provincial, urban, municipal and local elections."
During the unrest, that included police firing tear gas at rock-hurling youths, a number protesters were killed, but the exact toll is a matter of debate.
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said 42 people had been killed and dozens wounded since Monday in the protests in Kinshasa, a teeming tropical city of nine million people.
"As has unfortunately become a frequent occurrence in the DRC, the security forces have again demonstrated a totally excessive and disproportionate reaction by firing live ammunition on protesters," it said in a statement.
The government, however, angrily challenged the figures, saying 12 people had died, while a Congolese rights group put the number of dead at 28.
Speaking from Belgium on Tuesday, prominent DRC opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi called on the Congolese people to force a "dying regime" from power.
The unrest is the latest upheaval to rock the former Zaire, which has been plagued by wars at a cost of millions of lives and weakened by decades of misrule.
Kabila, now 43, came to power in January 2001 when politicians rushed to make the young soldier head of state after the assassination of his father, rebel turned president Laurent Kabila.
Many African presidents have tried, and often succeeded, to stay in power by rewriting their countries' constitutions to get rid of limits on presidential terms.
Last year, Burkina Faso's president Blaise Compaore was chased from power when he tried to change the constitution to extend his 27-year rule.