The Congolese Constitutional court is scheduled to sit this Friday and pronounce itself of the issue of Nationality of origin of Moïse Katumbi, a presidential candidate in the forthcoming December 20th elections.
Confrontations between dozens of presidential candidates has intensified triggering a sharp divide among the electorates.
On the same front, two petitions have been filed at the DRC’s constitutional court responsible for electoral disputes; they include, a request to invalidate the candidacy of Moïse Katumbi for, among other things, “lack of nationality of origin”.
Subject to provisions of the DRC constitution, only Congolese born of a Congolese father and mother may be appointed to positions of sovereignty or as state officers, including president, prime minister, in the courts and tribunals, the ministries of finance, defence and security.
Critics argue that the law was passed to target people like Katumbi, whose father had Greek and Italian roots, and was Jewish.
However, Alexis Thambwe Mwamba the former Minister of Justice has calmed things down, by claiming to have granted the president of Ensemble pour la République, “in compliance with standards”, a certificate of nationality which “has never been cancelled”.
Mwamba, during an interview with Radio France International, denounced what he describes as “national hypocrisy” on the question of the Congolese nationality of Katumbi the former governor of Katanga.
“I had no proof that he was Italian. I had denunciations, subsequently Katumbi hired a famous lawyer, Dupond-Moretti, who gave us documents saying that the municipality of residence did not recognize Italian nationality. For me, it’s a page turned,” declared the former Minister of Justice and the former President of the Congolese Senate.
According to him, it is absolutely “a distraction” to raise this question and it logically leads public opinion into “a false debate”, because President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi, himself ordered that Moise Katumbi be granted a passport in 2019 and affirmed “that we could not contest the nationality of the latter even though he was the head of a province of the country”.
“We must not set the country on fire by restricting the people who can come forward. I made it a problem at one time as Minister of Justice, but I consider that today it will be totally immoral to oppose Moïse Katumbi, the fact that it would have been said at one point that he would have another nationality. For me, we must let Moïse Katumbi introduce himself,” he insisted.
For its part, the Constitutional Court is set to sit this Friday, October 27, to rule on the various requests received, including those concerning the Congolese opponent, Moïse Katumbi.
