Joseph Kabila, the newly-elected president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has named Antoine Gizenga, the 81-year-old opposition veteran, as the country's new prime minister. Kabila announced the decision through a presidential decree read on state television on Saturday. The nomination of Gizenga, leader of the Socialist-leaning Unified Lumumbist Party (PALU), has been widely expected since Kabila was sworn in on December 6 as the country's first democratically elected president in more than 40 years. Gizenga, who came third in the first round of a presidential election in July, signed an agreement with Kabila's political coalition ahead of an October runoff, promising his support in exchange for a guarantee that the post of prime minister would go to a member of his party. "PALU is extremely pleased," Godefroid Mayobo, Gizenga's spokesman, told Reuters shortly after the announcement. "We have finally come back to where we were when we were pushed aside."
Gizenga served as deputy to Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first prime minister, who was assassinated in early 1961 months after the vast, mineral-rich country spanning central Africa achieved independence from Belgium the previous year. He later headed a rebel government of Lumumba's supporters in Kisangani in the country's northeast, following a coup led by Mobutu Sese Seko. First arrested, then driven into exile for nearly three decades, Gizenga has not had