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Joseph Kasongo

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Joseph Kasongo was a Congolese politician and the Republic of the Congo's first president of the National Assembly. He later served as deputy prime minister.

Biography

Joseph Kasongo was born to a family of the Kusu tribe in Kibombo. Around 1950 he served as president of the Élisabethville chapter of the Association des Batetela.[1]

Career

As the Belgian Congo moved towards independence, Joseph Kasongo won in the country's first national elections as a member of the Mouvement National Congolais and joined the National Assembly. On 21 June the Assembly selected him to be its first president, beating Jean Bolikango in a vote 74 to 58.[2] He presided over the country's formal independence ceremony that took place on 30 June 1960 at the Palais de la Nation, which included Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's controversial Congolese Independence Speech.[3] Following Lumumba's removal from power in September, Kasongo reached an agreement in mid December to work under the new leadership of Joseph Iléo. However, by January Colonel Joseph Mobutu's government of commissioners was dissolving due to financial problems. Kasongo angrily demanded that Lumumba be restored to the premiership. Proposals were made to have the dispute over governance settled in a round table discussion, and Kasongo rejected the idea in a letter to United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, writing, "As if the Congolese people, by freely electing its parliament, had not by the same token chosen its leaders...The Congolese crisis is essentially a crisis of legality...The solution is to restore parliament's constitutional powers."[4]

On 10 October 1962 Kasongo introduced a bill in the National Assembly that would amend the constitutional process for creating provinces. Differing greatly from Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula's government's proposal in which executives would hold most of the initiative, Kasongo's bill assigned Parliament the task of "determining the number and boundaries of new provinces, as well as the criteria for their creation." Though widely mistrusted by the Assembly since, as the presiding officer, Kasongo didn't represent any province, his bill was passed by them unanimously. The Senate thought his plan was too lengthy and rejected it.[5]

In April 1963 Kasongo was made deputy prime minister under Adoula's new government.[6]

Citations

  1. ^ Turner 1973, p. 190
  2. ^ Foreign Broadcast Information Service 1960, p. 35
  3. ^ Kanza 1978, p. 155
  4. ^ de Witte 2002, p. 76
  5. ^ Willame 1972, p. 41
  6. ^ O'Ballance 1999, p. 65

References

  • Daily Report: Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Issues 121-125. Foreign Broadcast Information Service. 1960.
  • Kanza, Thomas R. (1978). The rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba: conflict in the Congo (illustrated ed.). R. Collings. ISBN 9780860360681. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • O'Ballance, Edgar (1999). The Congo-Zaire Experience, 1960-98 (illustrated ed.). Springer. ISBN 9780230286481. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Turner, Thomas Edwin (1973). A Century of Conflict in Sankuru (Congo-Zaire). Vol. 1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Willame, Jean-Claude (1972). Patrimonialism and Political Change in the Congo. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804707930. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • de Witte, Ludo (2002). The Assassination of Lumumba (illustrated ed.). Verso. ISBN 9781859844106. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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