One More Try

Down the hill from Leopoldville's Lovanium University last week streamed 192 weary members of the Congo's Parliament. Some joined their families; others headed for the bars and a night on the town. The parliamentarians figured that they deserved a celebration. After two weeks of noisy debate behind a barbed-wire fence, they had finally agreed on a government for the chaotic Congo.

It had not been easy. United Nations Congo Chief Dr. Sture Linner and his aides had struggled day and night to collect the legislators, get them to sit down and get to work. But throughout the tedious session, Katanga, the Congo's richest province, stubbornly boycotted the proceedings, kept its secessionist Deputies at home. Eastern Province's Communist-backed Boss Antoine Gizenga, on the other hand, sent delegates but complicated things by staying home himself. He was sulking because he did not have enough parliamentary support to become Premier himself. Instead, the nod went to President Joseph Kasavubu's hand-picked candidate, cigar-smoking Cyrille Adoula, a 39-year-old anti-Communist former bank clerk whose goal is to unite the Congo without political pyrotechnics.

"I am going to try and bring peace and order to the Congo, reunify the army and bring Katanga into line as soon as possible," declared Adoula as the legislators rose to cheer his victory. It was far easier said than begun. Adoula's patchwork Cabinet turned out to be an unmanageable mixture of 41 ministers and state secretaries, many of them resolved to oust this new boss almost as soon as he takes over. At least a dozen are Gizengists, spiritual heirs of Hothead Patrice Lumumba and pets of the Reds. Gizenga himself has the key job of First Vice Premier if he ever chooses to come down to Leopoldville to take it.

To blast Secessionist Moise Tshombe out of Katanga now would require a military invasion by the Congolese army, and neither Adoula nor anyone else could be sure that the troops would cooperate. One big army contingent in Kasai province seems more interested in getting even with local Luntu tribesmen who had refused to let them in their area. In two weeks, the soldiers killed 600 Luntu and laid waste to every village in their path.

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