ECONOMY-DRC: Helpful Intervention or Meddling?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Juakali Kambale

KINSHASA, Aug 2 2005 (IPS) - A controversy has arisen in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over moves for an international committee that is helping oversee the country’s transition to democracy to assist government in managing public funds.

The initiative comes in the wake of allegations that these funds are being misappropriated. Foreign donors currently provide almost 60 percent of the Congolese budget, and just under 90 percent of funding for the country’s upcoming elections, scheduled to take place next year.

“It’s a de facto seizure of the country, which is now under the supervision of the international community,” Henri Mova Sakanyi, the minister of information, has complained. “Control mechanisms should use structures that already exist.”

However, few have any faith in the structures referred to by Sakanyi. The United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC) has gathered evidence that public funds are being embezzled by officials in certain branches of government.

“Eight million dollars slated for soldiers’ salaries disappears each month into the pockets of certain officials,” MONUC said recently.

In protest against the minimal wages that were being paid to them, soldiers from a garrison at Mbandaka, the regional capital of north-western Equator Province, staged a mutiny last month – and looted the town. Government troops and police who earned about 100 dollars a month under former president Laurent Kabila now receive just 50 dollars.

Kabila took control of the DRC from Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, but was assassinated in 2001. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph.

Opposition parties, especially the Union for Democracy and Social Progress led by Etienne Tshisekedi, have pointed to the dire financial straits that soldiers find themselves in as evidence that the transitional government is failing in its task.

The International Committee to Accompany the Transition (Comité international d’accompagnement de la transition, CIAT) has also warned authorities several times that soldiers need to be paid regularly, as they are essential to security in the DRC. Civil servants find themselves in the same predicament as troops.

“What’s most astonishing is that those responsible for such misappropriation of funds have never been punished,” says attorney Louis Kabongo, president of the Congolese chapter of Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog based in Berlin.

But Kabongo also believes that allowing CIAT to have a voice in the management of public funds would be an insult to Congolese leaders, “who will literally be infantilised”.

Others have welcomed the intervention. Boka Fwamba, a politician who belongs to the Goma faction of a former rebel movement, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, says he sees nothing odd about donor nations having the right to see how the money they give to the DRC is spent.

“From the moment that we allow, in good conscience, most of our national budget to come from the international community, we can no longer claim any kind of sovereignty,” he told IPS. “Furthermore, we lose all credibility when money given to us to reconstruct the country is embezzled.”

Another politician, Chira Lwirwa, agrees – saying the DRC laid the ground for foreign intervention in its domestic affairs when it invited other countries to help end its five-year civil war.

An accord was signed in South Africa in 2002 to end the conflict, during which about 3.5 million people are said to have died – many from disease and malnutrition. The peace agreement led to the establishment of an interim administration that includes representatives of Joseph Kabila’s government, and former rebels. MONUC, deployed in the DRC since 1999, is helping to maintain peace in the country, and disarm former rebels and other militants in eastern DRC.

“We ourselves expressly asked the international community to be involved in…our peace process. That means that the international community calls us to order every time there’s a bottleneck that messes up the peace process,” Lwirwa told IPS. “Discontent among soldiers or government civil servants when they don’t get paid constitutes just such a bottleneck.”

Georges Serre, France’s ambassador to the DRC, announced that CIAT and government would form a joint committee to manage public money at an event to celebrate Bastille Day, on Jul. 14.

“With a view towards getting ready for the elections, a jointly governed commission will be established very soon on the same model as that used for the security sector,” he said.

“Such a commission will be devoted to monitoring the transparent management of public finances and in particular…the salary payment network for civil servants and soldiers. This is an indispensable condition for restoring confidence between those who govern and those who are governed,” he added.

The news was received with embarrassment by a number of guests at the party, something which made headlines the following day: ‘Congolese Government Humiliated by CIAT’ noted the daily ‘Le Palmares’ paper.

Nevertheless, the message from Belgian ambassador S. Nyskens was much the same on Jul. 21, during an event to celebrate Belgium’s national day. “This is the only guarantee we have for the peace process in the DRC to succeed,” he said, in reference to the CIAT/government joint commission.

The Congolese administration appears to have accepted the proposal for a joint commission to be set up.