Kinshasa, DR Congo, June 23 – DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s gift of luxury vehicles to each o f the 500 deputies has provoked an uproar in the country and led one campaigning group to take the matter to court.
Speaker of parliament Christophe Mboso last week said the jeeps had been a present from the president to deputies for having acted on his appeal to join the presidential coalition, according to an audio recording widely shared online.
The recording provoked a torrent of criticism from opposition politicians and other activists.
In response the parliament has issued statements denouncing those who leaked the recording and the “bad faith” of certain “ill-intentioned” deputies.
“The purchase of 500 jeeps is corruption in broad daylight,” Florimont Muteba, president of the Observatory of Public Spending (ODEP) told AFP.
“We were sickened, we have condemned it. But the time for emotion has passed,” he added.
“Now it’s time to act, to go to court.”
Now they have to establish whether the money used to buy the cars came from the 2021 budget — which had no provision for such spending — or whether it came from the president’s own personal fortune, he said.
“These jeeps weren’t given free to the deputies,” pro-Tshisekedi deputy Eliezer Thambwe told AFP. “There will be deductions made from their wages.”
But Congo rights activist Jean-Claude Katende said: “Any deputy who takes the vehicle offered by the president of the republic will be considered as corrupt.”
Tshisekedi’s new government, dubbed the “Sacred Union of the Nation”, in which his inner circle occupy the key ministerial posts, ended two years of tense power sharing.
After beating his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and assuming the presidency in January 2019, Tshisekedi had to rule in a parliament dominated by Kabila’s deputies.
Tensions boiled over last December when Tshisekedi declared that power-sharing was blocking his agenda for reform, vowing to seek a new majority in parliament.
In a series of moves, he won over many Kabila legislators, gaining the perceived support of almost 400 out of 500 members of the National Assembly.
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