Rwanda: Kagame wins landslide victory

Supporters of Rwanda's President Paul Kagame hold up a campaign poster during a celebration rally at the Amahoro stadium on Aug. 10, 2010 in Kigali after the general elections. (Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images)

KIGALI, Rwanda — Rwandan president Paul Kagame is headed for another seven year term in office, with preliminary results from Monday’s election showing a landslide victory for the man regarded as one of Africa’s most effective leaders but who is also increasingly under fire for his authoritarianism.

With results in from 11 of Rwanda’s 30 districts, Kagame, running on behalf of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), sits in a comfortable lead with 92.9 percent of the vote.

His closest challenger, Damascene Ntawukuliryayo of the Social Democratic Party, with 4.9 percent of the vote has already conceded defeat. The other two contenders — the Liberal Party’s Prosper Higiro and Alvera Mukabaramba of the Party for Progress and Concorde — both scored less than 2 percent.

Addressing a rally at Kigali’s Amahoro Stadium, at well past four in the morning on Tuesday, Kagame dedicated his victory to the Rwandan people, and urged the crowd to maintain its support as his government continues to work toward Rwanda’s development.

“An RPF win is a victory for Rwanda, for all Rwandans,” he told supporters, most of whom had been dancing and singing for hours.

Despite some concerns over election related security, no incidents of violence were reported. At polling stations across the capital, the mood was largely subdued as voters lined up from 6 a.m. to cast their ballots.

While an African Union observer mission reported no irregularities in the poll, mission chief Anil K. Gayan told reporters he had some initial reservations about the format of the ballot. Rather than punching a card or marking an X, Rwandan voters are asked to leave a thumb print next to the name and photo of their preferred candidate, leading to some concerns that the government could determine who voted against the president.

Many critics say Kagame’s victory will be marred by the exclusion of three main opposition candidates and a pre-election period that the rights-group Amnesty International said was defined by a “climate of repression likely to inhibit freedom of expression ahead of the vote.”

Victoire Ingabire, the outspoken leader of the opposition party Union of Democratic Forces, remains under extended house arrest, and one of her supporters, Beatrice Uwimana, has been missing since police arrested a group of peaceful protesters on June 24.

Bernard Ntaganda, head of the fractured party PS-Imberakuri, is behind bars, accused of plotting to kill the leader of his party’s splinter faction.

Green Party chairman Frank Habineza, whose deputy was found murdered last month in a case that remains unsolved, was also left off the ballot.

Ingabire has called the election a “masquerade,” and alleges the opposition candidates allowed to run are “stooges” of Kagame and in the race merely to “bolster the legitimacy of the RPF and hoodwink the international community that the elections are free and fair.”

Though the three official challengers cited differences with the RPF on various policy issues, none openly criticized Kagame in their campaigns and all supported his last presidential bid in 2003.

Higiro and Ntawukuliryayo, both high-ranking parliamentarians in the current government, denied Ingabire’s accusations in interviews with GlobalPost, saying they were legitimate contenders competing within the rules of the system and committed to advancing their parties’ platforms.

Each defended the government’s actions in thwarting Ingabire, who was charged with “divisionism,” and “genocide ideology” after speaking publicly on numerous occasions in a manner said to stir-up ethnic sentiments.

Ethnicity remains an extremely touchy issue in Rwanda just 16 years after the country’s genocide, where 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered in 100 days by Hutu militias loyal to extremists within the government of former president Juvenal Habyarimana. Today, though tensions between Hutu and Tutsi are muted, most Rwandans admit that ethnic resentment continues to fester.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/100810/rwanda-kagame-wins-landslide-victory