The Parliament Meets; Mobutu Still Rules

For the first time in ten months, the Congo's fledgling Parliament reassembled last week in Lovanium University's handsome modern auditorium. Isolated from outside influences by an electrified barbed-wire fence, patrols of police dogs and Indian machine gunners of the U.N. force, the legislators made a forlorn stab at statesmanship. That it failed was largely the fault of two bedridden absentees: Red lining Antoine Gizenga, boss of Eastern province and heir apparent of Lumumba, and round-faced Moise Tshombe, President of the separatist state of Katanga.

By a narrow vote of 62-58, Gizenga's slate of seven candidates swept every office in the Chamber of Representatives; in the Senate, Gizenga supporters won five of the seven elective posts. The Congo's normally inert President Joseph Kasavubu was sufficiently stung by this rebuff to crossly remind the legislators that, as chief of state, it was his responsibility to name a Premier-designate--a strong hint that his first choice would not be Gizenga.

Just for Insurance. Gizenga's team might well have been defeated in Parliament had Moise Tshombe allowed his delegation of seven Senators and eight Deputies to attend the session in Leopoldville. But Tshombe, between bouts of bush fever, was more interested in sowing discord at home and abroad. Imprisoned for two months by Kasavubu's central government, he had won release by promising Strongman Joseph Mobutu that he would merge his 11,600 army, officered by 634 Europeans, with that of the central government. Once back in Katanga, Tshombe assured his Cabinet that the agreement was only a "gesture of support for Mobutu and a form of insurance for us." When Gen. Mobutu's staff officers arrived in Elisabethville to take over, they were coldly ignored.

Tshombe then blithely took on more sizable opponents by charging that there was a U.S. "plot" to use U.N. troops to crush Katanga and bring about the unification of the Congo. Stunned reporters were told that Katanga would "ask for and accept Russian help"--despite the fact that the Soviet Union has long denounced Tshombe as a "Belgian stooge" kept in power only by the backing of Western capitalists. European diplomats testily dismissed this attempted blackmail of the West and the U.N. as a piece of "dangerous skulduggery,"

Not for Sale. In his ramshackle capital of Stanleyville in faraway Eastern province, Antoine Gizenga discreetly remained in bed with a case of diplomatic "bronchitis." To help him assess his victory in the parliamentary elections, he had on hand a recently arrived delegation of Russian and Czech advisers. Remembering the botch they made of their effort to take over the Congo with Patrice Lumumba, the Communists this time may urge Gizenga to let President Kasavubu name one of his own men as Premier--on the theory that whoever he picks is bound to fail.

Final arbiter of any new government will be Major General Joseph Mobutu and his undisciplined soldiery. They were still the most potent single force on the Congo scene. At week's end, Mobutu made his position clear in an order of the day to his troops. "The National Army cannot tolerate that the country be handed over to men who are guided by foreign influences," said Mobutu. "The Congo is independent and will stay independent; it is not for sale to any ideological bloc." This declaration seemed to rule out just about everybody in the Congo--except maybe Mobutu himself.

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