Médard Mulangala Lwakabwanga (commonly known as Medard Mulangala; born 17 January 1957) is a politician from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is President of the Union for a Republican Majority and a leader of the Union Sacree pour l’Alternance, an umbrella grouping of opposition parliamentary parties and community groups that forms the third-largest political structure within the opposition and Rapporteur of the National Assembly’s Committee on Economics and Finance, making him the opposition’s lead spokesman on budgetary, economic and investment policy in the Republic. A renowned political commentator on the affairs of DRC, the Great Lakes of Africa and the African continent, Mulangala was widely seen as a leading candidate for President of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the presidential elections of 2011 as a unity figure able to bring together the disparate parliamentary and nationwide opposition. Biography Early life Mulangala was born on 17 January 1957 in Kananga, capital of Western Kasaï Province of Belgian Congo to François Lwakabwanga Mukungishi and Thérèse Shaumba wa Shaumba, the fourth of seven children. Mulangala’s father was politically active and was one of the founders of Lulua Frères the leading socio-political movement in western Kasaï before Independence. As a leader of Lulua Frères he was a delegate to the Round Table of 1960 held in Brussels during which Independence from Belgium was negotiated. Following Independence, Mulangala’s father was elected as a provincial MP of Western Kasai and then three times as Governor of Western Kasaï, and from 1966 – 1969 he served as the Governor of Bandundu, Kivu and Bas Congo provinces. After growing disenchanted with Mobutu regime he became a leading figure in the founding of the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès social (UDPS), an opposition movement to Mobutu formerly launched in February 1982. He is now retired from politics. Much of Mulangala’s early life was spent away from his parents with much of his informative years spent in Belgium. He did, however, return each summer to his family in DRC to the various provinces where his father was assigned, and later, to Kinshasa after his family’s relocation there in 1970. Education Mulangala started primary school in 1963 at the Institut Saint Dominique Savio in Mikalayi (Western Kasaï) and completed this stage of his education at Collège Saint Joseph in Mouscron, Belgium. His secondary education was begun and completed at Collège Saint Henri in Comines, a catholic