Rwandans go to polls in election expected to extend Kagame’s rule

President Paul Kagame seeks re-election

KIGALI, July 15 – Rwandans lined up on Monday to elect their next president, with incumbent Paul Kagame widely expected to win a fourth term and extend his near quarter century in charge of the East African country.

The two men standing against him – Frank Habineza from the Democratic Green Party and independent Philippe Mpayimana – said they were hoping to make some progress, but analysts and rights groups said Kagame’s overwhelming victory was all but certain.

Kagame, who got more than 93% of the vote at the last three elections, won praise from Western and regional leaders at the time for helping end the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Campaign groups including Human Rights Watch have accused authorities of cracking down on journalists, the opposition and civil society groups before the vote. Kagame has dismissed such accusations and described himself as the stability candidate.

His re-election could signal a measure of political stability for his corner of a fractured region, but also continued global scrutiny, given the accusations of abuses and of supporting rebels in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo – a charge he has also denied.

There is very little room for improvement for Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame’s election after getting almost 99% of the vote last time round.

The scale of his victory in 2017, along with his 95% in 2003 and 93% in 2010, raised some questions about how truly democratic the elections were.

Criticism that the former refugee and rebel leader confidently bats away.

“There are those who think 100% is not democracy,” Mr Kagame told thousands of cheering supporters at a campaign rally in western Rwanda last month.

Referring to elections elsewhere, without naming a specific country, he added: “There are many who are voted in office with 15%… Is that democracy? How?”

What happens in Rwanda is Rwanda’s business, the president insisted.

His backers agreed, chanting “they should come and learn” as they waved the red, white and sky blue flags of the governing Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party.

At over 6ft (1.83m), the wiry 66-year-old father of four cuts a stern and imposing figure amid the crowds. He can crack a smile and a joke or two, but the bespectacled leader can often take on the grimace of a disappointed elder.

His soft, thoughtful delivery forces the listener to take note and when he speaks he is usually very direct, rarely mincing his words.

Even on the occasions when he deploys more cryptic or diplomatic language, he will use insinuation to let people know what he is talking about.His reelection could signal a measure of political stability for his corner of a fractured region, but also continued global scrutiny, given the accusations of abuses and of supporting rebels in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo – a charge he has also denied.

Mr Kagame’s life has been shaped by the conflict between Rwanda’s Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups.

In order to overcome this, his government now insists that people identify as Rwandans rather than with a specific ethnic group.

President since 2000, he is running for a fourth term, but Mr Kagame has been the real leader of the East African country ever since July 1994. This is when his Uganda-backed rebel army ousted the Hutu extremist government which had orchestrated the genocide of that year.

He initially served as vice-president and defence minister.

Many of his supporters, among them some leading Western politicians, praise him for bringing stability and rebuilding Rwanda after the mass slaughter in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Some accuse his then rebel army of revenge killings at the time, but his government has consistently said they were isolated instances and that those responsible were punished.

The president is not backward when it comes to criticising the West, but he also tries to secure its backing by sometimes playing on the guilt over the failure to prevent the genocide.

Rwanda was also a partner and a financial beneficiary in a now-junked UK scheme to send asylum seekers to the country.

The Democratic Green Party’s Frank Habineza and independent Philippe Mpayimana are both running again, in a repeat of the presidential election seven years ago.

However, last time round they got just over 1% of votes between them.

Other political parties have backed Mr Kagame for president.

Opposition politician Diane Rwigara, an outspoken critic of Mr Kagame, was barred from taking part on the grounds that she did not present the correct paperwork, which she dismissed as an excuse to stop her running.

Backers of the Democratic Green Party’s Frank Habineza have been trying to drum up support for their candidate

Mr Kagame has also been accused of silencing, through imprisonment and intimidation, other potential opponents. He says he should not be held responsible for a weak opposition.

His powerful network of spies has allegedly carried out a spate of cross-border assassinations and abductions.

They are alleged to have even targeted their own former boss, ex-intelligence chief Col Patrick Karegeya, who fled Rwanda after falling out with Mr Kagame.

He was murdered in 2014 in his suite at an upmarket hotel in South Africa’s main city, Johannesburg.

Mr Kagame did little to distance himself from the killing, while officially denying any involvement.

“You can’t betray Rwanda and not get punished for it,” he told a prayer meeting shortly afterwards. “Anyone, even those still alive, will reap the consequences. Anyone. It is a matter of time.”

The president’s pursuit of security at home has led him to send troops into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, saying they are pursuing a Hutu rebel group. Rwanda is also accused of backing the M23 rebel group there – something which it denies, despite a wealth of evidence, including in a recent UN report.

Rwanda’s electoral commission says on its website that it conducts “free, fair and transparent elections to promote democracy and good governance in Rwanda”.

“To me, the upcoming presidential election in Rwanda is a non-event,” says Dr Joseph Sebarenzi, a former speaker of the Rwandan parliament, who lost parents and many family members during the genocide, and now lives in exile in the US.

“The election is like a football game where the organiser is also a competitor, selects other competitors, orders people to attend the game, and where everyone knows the pre-determined winner but must behave as if the game is real.”

President Kagame became Rwanda’s vice-president in 1994 at the age of 36

Born in 1957 into a well-to-do household in central Rwanda, he was the youngest of five children.

But, barely two years old, he became a refugee in neighbouring Uganda, fleeing the persecution and pogroms of the late 1950s with his family and thousands of others from the minority Tutsi population.

Despite being just an infant at the time, Mr Kagame has said he can still “remember looking out onto the next hill. We could see people burning the houses there.

“They were killing people. My mother was so desperate. She didn’t want to leave this place,” the president told American journalist and unofficial biographer Stephen Kinzer.

These killings came after Belgian colonisers switched which ethnic group they backed, to favour an emerging ruling elite from the majority Hutu ethnic group, some of whom had suffered ill-treatment under the Tutsi monarchy.

Rwanda gained independence in 1962.

In the late 1970s, Mr Kagame made a series of clandestine visits back home.

While in the capital, Kigali, he frequented a particular hotel in Kiyovu, one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Its bar was popular with politicians, security officers and civil servants who gossiped as they sipped their beer after work.

These visits to his homeland sharpened his interest in the art of espionage.

He trained in military intelligence in Uganda and joined the successful rebellion in that country led by Yoweri Museveni that saw him take power in 1986. Mr Kagame further trained in Tanzania, Cuba and the US.

He then led his mainly Tutsi rebel army which marched into Rwanda in 1990.

“[The training] was useful. Cuba, in its wars with the US and connection to Russia, was quite advanced in matters of intelligence. There was also political education: The struggle is about what? How do you sustain it?” he told Mr Kinzer.

Billboards in the capital, Kigali, are urging people to vote for the president for another term

He has sought to sustain the struggle by targeting economic development – Mr Kagame suggested Rwanda would emulate Singapore or South Korea and achieve development in a generation.

Mr Kagame maintains the huge crowds of supporters at his rallies are just one example of the trust and love Rwandans have for him and their wish that he continues as their leader, although he once said he would have groomed a successor by 2017.

Because of constitutional changes, he could, in theory, remain in power until 2034.

“The context of every country” matters, Mr Kagame said in a live interview on the state broadcaster last month, addressing the issue of his time in power.

“[The West says]: ‘Oh you have been there too long’. But that’s none of your business. It’s the business of these people here.”

It is difficult to know what the future holds for this country, affectionately known as the land of a thousand hills, but history shows that in countries where the head of state is stronger than state institutions, change of power can turn violent, leading to chaotic post-regime periods.