KIGALI, RWANDA — Three candidates are vying for the presidency in Rwanda, where incumbent President Paul Kagame has won every election since 2000 and is widely expected to win again Monday.
At a recent campaign rally, Kagame told supporters much has been done but more is possible if he is reelected.
“There are roads, electricity and many other infrastructures that we have achieved,” Kagame said in Kinyarwanda, “but we still want to achieve more. We will do that with your help, starting with the elections we have on July 15.”
The 66-year-old Rwanda Patriotic Front leader is expected to cruise to an easy victory.
One reason, according to critics, is that he has ruled with a firm hand and stifled dissent.
But another, say analysts, is the way he’s been able to guide the East African country toward internal peace since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.
Eric Ndushabandi, a political science and international relations professor at the University of Rwanda and an associate researcher at the Louvain University in Brussels, said Kagame’s support has been buoyed by his efforts to address Rwandans’ need for security and stability after the genocide.
“The language, practice and success around stabilization and security, mainly in internal politics, it is joining the expectations and aspirations of many Rwandans after this tragic and historical background,” Ndushabandi said.
He also said there is a big gap between the presidential candidates in terms of popularity, ideology, means and capacity.
The challengers
Democratic Green Party candidate Frank Habineza said he is in the race again this year because the incumbent president has been in office too long. Habineza last ran against Kagame in 2017.
He told VOA that he’s campaigned in 24 of the country’s 30 districts so far and that voters have been more enthusiastic this time around.
“I am giving them hope that after 30 years, we really need to see a different way of living, different political programs, different thinking and a different vision,” he said. “We are not going to destroy the good things that have been done before, but we want to give them better hope and a better future.”
Independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana, a journalist turned politician, also said he respects how far the country has come but wants to be seen as someone who can move it forward even more.
This is also his second bid for the top job. He says the innovative ideas and initiatives in his campaign manifesto have received coverage in 50 articles.
Other candidates were barred from the race by the National Electoral Commission for various reasons. One was a fierce Kagame critic, Diane Rwigara, who the commission said did not provide a criminal record statement and did not collect the minimum number of supporters’ signatures.
Rwigara expressed her disappointment on the X social media platform, where she told Kagame, “This is the second time you cheat me out of my right to campaign, why won’t you let me run.”
Critics and rights groups have long accused Kagame of silencing opposition voices and creating a climate of fear that discourages dissent in general.
Issues, economy
While support for Kagame remains generally strong on the streets of Kigali, some Rwandans say they’d like to see issues such as joblessness addressed.
“You see the progress this country has achieved by the leader who’s in charge. We wish that whoever is elected should not destroy what has been achieved but to continue it,” Theoneste Gatari, a Kigali resident, told VOA in Kinyarwanda.
Azabe Belton, another Kigali resident, said, “The youth make up most Rwandans. We want the person who’ll be elected to set up projects that help the youth get jobs because most of them are completely unemployed.”
According to the World Bank, the unemployment rate in Rwanda was 14.9% in 2023. While the bank lauded the resiliency of the country’s economy, which boasted a 7.6% growth rate in the first three quarters of 2023, it also said that public debt had increased significantly in recent years.
Teddy Kaberuka, an economic analyst, said Rwanda is a growing economy trying to attract industries and factories that can produce and provide jobs.
But the challenge, he said, is that “we are still having huge portions of the population [that] may be educated but not qualified [for manufacturing jobs]. Those are long-term investments that any government needs to address because it’s not in one year that you can create a pool of skilled people.”
Kaberuka said Rwanda is a country under construction that has gone through three economic phases since the genocide. The first 10 years, he said, were about laying a foundation for development by building security and institutions, providing basic needs for the population and allowing people to heal.
The second phase was about investing in development. The third phase was about weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc around the globe.
All that took place under the leadership of Kagame. Now, Kaberuka said, Rwanda is entering a new phase, one in which voters will decide who they trust to move the country forward.
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