Following the national concertations in Kinshasa in early October, President Kabila gave a speech in which he announced, in the interest of national unity, the formation of a "government of national cohesion." Now, a month later, there are signs that Kabila will move soon to set up this government. When he does so, he will have a difficult choice: keep the current prime minister and maintain course on state reforms; or bring in someone who can help him rally the political elite around him.
Prime Minister Matata Ponyo, who has been in office since April 2012, has been able to make modest progress on improving governance, especially with regards to the economy and state finances. He is particularly popular with the donor community, who think that he has been able to name some competent technocrats to various ministries and has inspired a new élan in government. Many soldiers and state officials are now paid directly through bank accounts and through mobile cash transfers; ministers are more transparent in their interactions with journalists; and inflation has remained negligible. (Although the cours des comptes recently released a damning audit of state finances.) If Kabila wants someone who can keep up this progress, then Matata and his team might be the best bet.
But is this Kabila's priority? The president is about the plunge into a difficult period in the run-up to the end of his term in 2016. Due to constitutional term limits, he will then have to hand over the reins to someone else or change the constitutional term limits--which is explicitly forbidden by Article 220 of the 2006 constitution. A third option is also increasingly being floated: just deferring elections, much like Gbagbo did in the Ivory Coast, for several years, using the national census and funding problems as a pretext.
As the president enters into this turbulence, it may be more important to have a prime minister who can rally the fractious political elite around him, so they can back ...
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