Institutional reforms in the DRC: recommendations from civil society
The Gombe district in Kinshasa, April 19, 2020. REUTERS / Kenny Katombe
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3 min
2023, the year of the next presidential election, is still a long way off, but electoral issues are already making headlines.
The NGOs want the electoral system to be reformed, in order to avoid the same difficulties and disputes as during the elections at the end of 2018. The Consortium of National Election Observation Missions thus met for four days until Sunday the 13th. September, and will fight during the parliamentary session which opens this Tuesday to pass its proposals.
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With our correspondent in Kinshasa,
Patient Ligodi
These organizations include the electoral observation missions of the Catholic Church and those of the Protestant Church.
They want, for example, to achieve an electoral commission that is totally depoliticized and run by members exclusively from civil society.
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They can be worn by political parties, but they cannot be members of political parties,"
explains Maitre Patrick Ntambwe, coordinator of the Synergy of Citizen Election Observation Missions (SYMOCEL).
We have seen it: the members of the political parties appointed by the political parties had a sort of accountability vis-à-vis the components that had appointed them
.
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Sanction judges who violate the law
These electoral missions also propose the establishment of a special disciplinary chamber to sanction the judges of the Constitutional Court in the event of denial of justice and flagrant violation of the fair trial during electoral disputes.
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This would give more guarantees to the parties which engage in a process,
continues the coordinator,
so as to know that when it becomes necessary to make recourse to justice within the framework of the electoral dispute, even the judge is required to respect the law and if he does not, there is a mechanism to sanction him.
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The list of proposals is long and will be tabled in parliament, the presidency of the Republic, the government and several other institutions.
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Read also: DRC: FCC and Cach do not want to lose control of the political reform process
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