Kinshasa - The Democratic Republic of Congo's first freely elected parliament in four decades officially opened on Friday in a highly emotional atmosphere.
"I declare open the first plenary session of the National Assembly," said parliamentary secretary general Constant Tshiswaka.
He read out the agenda for the day - the roll-call of the 500 elected parliamentarians and the designation of the parliament's provisional bureau.
The legislators then stood up, some smiling, some visibly moved, to sing the national anthem, which urges Congolese to create "a more beautiful country".
They were elected on July 30, when the DRC also held its first multi-party presidential election.
"I received a mandate from my constituency to end the enslavement of the Bondo territory," said deputy Luci Kipele, of her region in the northeast.
"In Bondo there are no schools, no hospitals, no roads. We came here firmly determined to change this situation," she told AFP.
"The task before us is enormous. We will do our best to restore this country's soul," said another deputy, Christophe Mboso Nkodia from Bandunu in the west.
More than 200 seats in the 500-seat parliament are held by members of the 31-party Alliance of the Presidential Majority, headed by the 35-year-old outgoing president Joseph Kabila.
Another hundred form an opposition bloc supporting Kabila's main election rival Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Rally of Congolese Nationalists (Renaco).
The make-up of the parliament assembly reflects the results of the first round of the presidential ballot, in which Kabila scored 44.4 percent of the vote and Bemba won 20 percent.
While short of an absolute majority, Kabila will probably be able to form a government with the support of two other blocs, both of which have promised to back his alliance.
The Unified Lumumbist Party (PALU) of Antoine Gizenga, the country's third largest party, announced on Thursday it would vote for Kabila in the second round of the presidential election on October 29. It said PALU's 34 deputies would back Kabila in parliament.
Gizenga, 80, came third in the first round of the presidential poll in July, with 13 percent. His support is concentrated in Bandundu province and Kinshasa, where Kabila is weaker.
Kabila can also count on nine deputies aligned with Nzanga Mobutu, son of late dictator Joseph-Desire Mobutu, who ruled the then Zaire for 32 years.
The last multi-party parliamentary election in the DRC came in 1965, just months before Mobutu seized power.
The creation of the new assembly and the presidential election are the final stages in a three-year peace process that followed the DRC's 1998-2003 civil war. At its height, that war drew involved the armies of at least six neighbouring countries. - Sapa-AFP