Rwanda Heads to the Polls to Likely Re-Elect Kagame for Fourth Term

Rwanda goes to the polls on Monday, but there’s little doubt that President Paul Kagame will cruise to a fourth term in office.

Over 9 million voters are registered for Monday’s election. As well as choosing a president, they will elect members of the 80-seat lower house of parliament.

Provisional results are expected by 20 July, but suspense over the outcome is limited.

Kagame and his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) are assured – as usual – of a crushing victory.

Only two candidates – Democratic Green party leader Frank Habineza and the independent Philippe Mpayimana – were approved by the state-run electoral commission to run against him.

The others, including Kagame’s most vocal critics, were invalidated for various reasons that included prior criminal convictions.

That result followed a constitutional change removing term limits that would have barred him from standing again.

The 66-year-old has been de facto ruler of the small Great Lakes nation since 1994 when he helped lead the rebel movement that brought the Rwandan genocide to an end.

He was elected president by parliament in 2000 and has won three times at the ballot box, always scoring at least 93 percent of the vote. In 2017 he won nearly 99 percent of the vote.

Two challengers

Kagame’s two rivals both ran against him in 2017.

Habineza told Reuters news agency that he expected to exceed the 0.48 percent he scored last time.

“People are only considering 2017 and say that I got 0.4 percent, but they forget that our party stood for parliament and got more than 5 percent,” he said.

Mpayimana, who works for the Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement, urged voters at a campaign event to consider his candidacy.

“It’s true you cannot change the winning team, but we also have to give opportunities to the junior teams to see if they can deliver on their pledges. That is what democracy means,” he said.

Kagame generation

Kagame’s most vocal supporters are young people – the “Kagame Generation” in a country where two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30.

“I don’t know any other candidate but Paul Kagame,” said Fabrice Nkurunziza, 19, at a campaign rally in Kigali on Saturday.

“The president has made many achievements, there’s equality, development, knowledge… He is the one [to whom] we attribute all the achievements.”

But Kagame and his government have drawn criticism, especially from abroad.

Some Western nations and rights activists accuse him of ruling in a climate of fear – silencing the media and the opposition with a brutal campaign of arrests and extrajudicial killings.

Neighbouring DRC accuses Rwanda of fomenting instability in the east and supporting armed rebel groups, including the Tutsi-led M23.

Rwanda‘s government denies the accusations against it, and while campaigning Kagame promised continued “good security, development and good governance based on a real democracy”.

(with newswires)