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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Post-Mobuto Regime Draws Quick Protests Popular Opposition Leader Won’t Recognize Government

Washington Post

Deep rifts in this nation’s new political order burst into view Friday when a popular opposition leader passed over for a post in President Laurent Kabila’s Cabinet refused to recognize the new government and called on his supporters to resist its rule.

Even as the spurned opposition leader, former Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi, spoke during a defiant news conference Friday afternoon, his supporters already had taken to the streets in the first wave of unrest to hit the Kabila regime.

Kabila’s soldiers, hailed as liberators when they marched into this capital just six days ago, fired in the air to disperse hundreds of marchers.

Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire toppled longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko last Saturday when it occupied Kinshasa after a seven-month military campaign and renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, in trying to consolidate control over this fractious, impoverished country, Kabila must deal not only with the challenge raised by Tshisekedi and other elements of the long-standing anti-Mobutu political opposition, but with an undercurrent of ethnic and nationalistic enmity.

Friday’s protesters, like many Kinshasa residents, voiced suspicion about members of the Tutsi ethnic group who form the core of Kabila’s fighting force and are prominent in the alliance’s political leadership.

These tensions are surfacing just as Kabila’s alliance seeks to assemble the country’s first post-Mobutu leadership.

Tshisekedi, who still considers himself the country’s legitimate prime minister, said Friday that he does not recognize Kabila’s government.

“It’s not only that I do not recognize the government, but I ask the people to ignore the government,” Tshisekedi said.

“This population is not ready - not at all ready - to submit again, to suffer again a dictatorship.”