In a strongly worded statement received by IRIN on Thursday from rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC), Bemba took issue with remarks made by Gildas LeLidec, French ambassador to the DRC, on the occasion of France’s national day, 14 July. In particular, Bemba criticised France’s (financial) institutional cooperative support of non-democratically elected regimes of late President Laurent-Desire Kabila and his successor, son and current DRC President Joseph Kabila. Bemba also disputed LeLidec’s optimistic portrayal of the current state of affairs in the DRC, citing “cosmetic measures” taken by Kabila and intended “for external consumption.” Bemba’s statement concluded with a final plea that France and the European Union (EU) allow the Congolese people “the freedom to choose, without constraints and without pressure, our institutions and their leaders. May [France and the EU] help us to achieve this aim, and tomorrow support without hesitation the institutions put in place by the inter-Congolese dialogue.”
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