Paul Kagame was elected president with 99% of the vote this week on a 98% turnout. Although undoubtedly disappointed in the 1% he wasn’t quite able to win over, Kagame can always rewrite the constitution again and run in five years. Despite significant electoral fraud, is the government generally supported by Rwandan’s?
How Fair Was Monday’s Election?
Not very. Rwanda’s general election is widely considered to be fraudulent by international observers. Paul Kagame, who has been the de-facto leader of Rwanda since 1994, won yet another landslide presidential victory in the wake of the suspension of most other major candidates.
Since independence, Rwandan presidential elections have always been a way of showing the authority of the regime rather than being a legitimate barometer for popular will. All but one Rwandan presidential election has won with more than 95% of the vote (with the exception of 2010 where Kagame only won 93%).
Some Opposition Presence
Despite an extremely uncompetitive presidential election, Rwanda’s legislative elections are markedly more pluralistic. In this week’s election to the Chamber of Deputies, the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front won only 62% of the vote according to official government sources.
Although all support the presidency of Paul Kagame, some limited criticism of government policy is allowed through these parties. Rwanda’s opposition parties here are sometimes referred to as ‘systemic opposition’; creating the illusion of pluralism without any real power.
How Did The Government Respond To Criticism?
The pro-government newspaper “The New Times” rejected those who criticised Kagame’s 99.15% victory “as if there is a minimum set percentage of votes for any election to qualify as democratic”. This argument is one repeated by the president himself, who turned criticism by foreign leaders back around on them, saying in a speech “There are many who are voted in office with 15%… Is that democracy? How?”.
The New Times used a toned-down version of this argument, stating that in the same way it would be chauvinistic for Rwandans to criticise America’s electoral college system in which “the president lacks majority approval”, it would be equally so for Americans to do the same.
The conflation of Rwanda’s right to national sovereignty and Paul Kagame’s right to rig elections is a favourite line of Kagame’s government. Similarly, the opposition has frequently criticised the government for allegedly cooperating with western multinational corporations as part of Rwanda’s occupation of the Eastern DRC.
Whilst it’s difficult to determine true popularity in a political environment that heavily restricts dissent, is Kagame’s government truly popular?
Is Paul Kagame Popular?
Paul Kagame’s regime cannot be viewed outside of the light of the genocide that brought him to power. During Rwanda’s Civil War in 1994, as many as 800,000 Tutsis and 10,000 Twa were killed in a genocide by Hutu ethno-nationalists. Paul Kagame’s rebels overthrew the Hutu-dominated regime; justifying his rule in opposition to the genocidal racism which had defined the nation.
Kagame has often tried to sell his crackdowns on the opposition as a way of preventing another genocide from ever happening again, with the vaguely defined crimes of “genocide ideology” and “sectarianism” being used to imprison opposition leaders.
On the economic front, Kagame has brought Rwanda from among the poorest countries in the continent to an economy on track to fall in the ‘middle income’ threshold by 2035. Kagame’s pledge to make Rwanda the next Singapore is clearly one with great popularity to a population in the shadow of one of the 20th century’s worst genocides.
Final Thought
Although highly fraudulent, this week’s election shows general satisfaction (or at the very least apathy) towards Paul Kagame’s continued rule over the country. Over the last thirty years, Kagame has maintained law and order.
To the Rwandans who lived through the horrors of the 1994 genocide, that appears to be enough.
For more of Chamber UK’s African analysis please click here.
This article was written by Chamber UK’s features writer – Alex Connor.