Monday's Kinshasa press comments are related to President Joseph Kabila's decision last Saturday delaying the promulgation of the new Constitution that was adopted in the 18 December 2005 referendum.

The promulgation of the Constitution, which was adopted in the 18 December 2005 referendum, did not take place on Saturday 11 February 2006 as initially announced. "The announced ceremony which was to see the promulgation, by the head of state, of the Constitution has been indefinitely postponed," reports La Référence Plus. Joseph Kabila wants to make sure that "the text to be promulgated by him is free from any errors or misprints (...) Helped by Parliament, Presidency of the Republic and Supreme Court experts, the offices of the National Assembly devoted much of last week to tidying up the text," According to La Référence Plus. But everything tends to suggest that Joseph Kabila is facing a "dilemma", editorialises La Tempête des Tropiques, explaining that "[t]he promulgation of the Constitution is in itself a trap that would ensnare the current President of the Transitional Government. Because of the [resultant] abolition of the transitional provisions, Kabila would find himself alone in the 'espace presidentiel', leaving his companions [his four current Vice Presidents] to fall into an inconsolable void."

The fact remains however that the delay in promulgating the Constitution would cause cause "a chain of delays in the electoral process," according to La Référence Plus. "The Parliament will not be able to adopt the whole of the electoral law as long as the Constitution is not promulgated. [Furthermore], even when the promulgation text is made public, the Constitution will still have to be published in the official gazette (...)," La Référence Plus notes.

With all these "legal technicalities", the [electoral] process runs into delay, L'Observateur laments. While "the [December 2005] constitutional referendum helped remove a number of obstacles to the electoral process," notes L'Observateur, "[w]e are now under the impression that things are slowing down, and coming at a virtual standstill, like a bird that has been shot in the wing." According to L'Observateur, the different "electoral stages should be launched quickly so as to ensure that a least the first round of presidential election has been held by 30 June 2006." If not, L'Observateur warns, "The prophets of doom and other troublemakers would not hesitate to try to make the situation worse that it already is."

Meanwhile, "a group of ambassador members of the International Community In Support of the Transition[ICST] plan to visit Etienne Tshisekedi Wa Mulumba, the national president of [the opposition party] UDPS," Le Phare announces. Such visit, however, is unlikely to cause "any pleasure at all among [UDPS] activists [who had handed MONUC a memo addressed to the ISCT], had been disappointed by the manner in which the ICST refereed the conflicts over the implementation of the Global and All-Inclusive Agreement, and [more recently were] especially angered by the ISCT's hesitations about the questions that the UDPS had raised regarding its participation in the electoral process," Le Phare explains.