Rwandas have started voting in the presidential and congressional elections. Paul Kagame, the country’s longtime leader, will likely be re-elected for another five years.
More than nine million people have signed up to vote in the election, which started Monday at 7 a.m. local time (05:00GMT) across the East African country.
Kagame has been Rwanda’s de facto leader for 30 years and is almost certain to keep his job as president. Since Rwandan courts have banned his most vocal critics, he has only two opponents.
Kagame won easily, with almost 100% of the votes in the last elections.
Who is Kagame up against?
Only two of the eight people who applied to run against Kagame were chosen. They were Frank Habineza, head of Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party, and Philippe Mpayimana, an independent.
Bernard Ntaganda and Victoire Ingabire, two well-known opposition leaders, asked the Rwandan courts to overturn their sentences, which would have prevented them from running in the election.
Diane Rwigara, a well-known critic of Kagame, was also not allowed to run because of problems with her paperwork. This was the second time she had been denied the right to run.
Amnesty International, a rights group, said before the election that the opposition in Rwanda faces “severe restrictions… as well as threats, arbitrary detention, prosecution, trumped-up charges, killings and enforced disappearances.”
The Memory of Kagame
About 65% of Rwandans are under 30 years old, which means that Kagame, who is running for a fourth term, is the only leader most people have ever known.
The 66-year-old is charged with bringing the country back together after the 1994 genocide by Hutu fighters that killed almost 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis but also Hutu moderates.
Rights groups, on the other hand, say that his government is autocratic and that it stifles the media and political dissent by killings, detentions, and forced disappearances.
In the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a UN report says Rwandan troops are fighting with M23 rebels in the troubled east, the country is accused of making things less stable. Kigali has rejected the claims.
Kagame has also been in charge of controversial changes to the constitution that shortened presidential terms from seven to five years and restarted the clock for the Rwandan leader, giving him the chance to stay in power until 2034.
Even though he has many critics, Kagame has a lot of support at home. Between 2012 and 2022, he oversaw an average of 7.2% economic growth and the construction of infrastructure like hospitals and roads.
At a Saturday gathering for Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party, Venantia Nyirangendo, 51, said, “He has done great things. He has helped our children attend school, hired more teachers, and given us health insurance.”
Elections for parliament at the same time
Over 500 people are running for 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. This is the first time Rwanda’s parliamentary election has taken place at the same time as the presidential election.
Of those, 53 are chosen by everyone who votes. The RPF has 40 seats, and its friends have 11. Habineza’s Green Party has two MPs.
There are also 24 spots for women, two for teens, and one for disabled people. Independents can only run for these spots, and the elections will occur indirectly on Tuesday.
