Word: kabila
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Introduced at the ARCO Forum as the youngest head of state to ever speak at the Institute of Politics, 30-year-old Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, outlined his optimistic plan for the future of his impoverished and war-torn country, calling for peace before democracy can be established...
...calling for immediate talks on elections and last week, with other opposition leaders, met the head of the main rebel group Jean-Pierre Bemba to discuss a possible alliance. "The weight of Congo is too much for him. Politics needs strategy, and all he's got is foreign backing." Kabila says he will hold elections once the "foreign aggressors" have withdrawn and dismisses talk of foreign influence on the government. "The Congolese people understand. There is a government, I am the President of this country and we are in charge of whatever is going on in the Congo," he says...
...telling break from tradition is his refusal to have billboards of his portrait erected. Both Mobutu and Laurent-Désiré Kabila fueled a cult of personality through posters, songs and, in Mobutu's case, a nightly pre-news video showing him floating Godlike in the clouds. "I know how I look, so I don't need to have a poster to realize that I look like Joseph," he says. "Has it really got any meaning? Times have changed. The expectations of the people of the Congo are not to see Joseph on posters or to listen to songs...
...early success, Kabila is still largely a mystery, at least to Congolese. He has appeared on television just once, and some people grumble that he has spent too much time overseas. "He's a person we are just discovering," says Mabi Mulumba, professor of economics at the University of Kinshasa and a former Prime Minister under Mobutu. "Even the old guard know little about him." Kabila, who has a girlfriend and says he wants to marry soon and have a family, spent much of his childhood in Tanzania, where his father owned a bar and based the rebel movement that...
...Could he prove Congo's savior? His father promised much but dragged the country further into despair. Joseph Kabila, whose tendency to platitude may indicate a lack of acuity or, perhaps, an awareness that he still has much to learn, says becoming President is a sacrifice he is happy to make. He pauses before hinting at a most un-African notion: that being President is not a job for life. "After some time, maybe I'll leave office, and I'll have enough time to go and do other things," he says. Then, perhaps, he will have the time...