Rwandans voted yesterday in a presidential election that incumbent Paul Kagame is poised to win, challenged only by candidates close to his regime following a tense run-up marred by arrests and killings.
His supporters credit the former rebel leader with ending the genocide and ushering in stability and growth, but critics accuse him of undermining democracy and cracking down on opponents.
Some 5.2 million Rwandans are eligible to cast their ballot.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Polling stations in the capital Kigali opened at 6am sharp, a correspondent reported.
“In some places, people were standing in line before 5am, as early as 4:30am,” said police spokesman Eric Kayiranga, who added that no incidents were reported overnight.
State radio reported that at some polling stations in the Western Province, every voter on the registry had cast their ballot in the first hour.
Emmanuel Ndagijimana, a young domestic worker sporting a Las Vegas T-shirt, arrived breathless at a polling station in a primary school in Kigali’s Kimihurura district, obviously in a hurry to get back to work.
“It’s important to come and choose the president,” he said.
Asked which candidate he would choose, he said: “It’s a secret.”
There was little doubt, however, that the 52-year-old Kagame, who won the 2003 election with 95 percent of the vote, would win a second term in office.
Kagame has been the de facto leader of this central African nation since his rebel group turned political party, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic front (RPF), routed Hutu extremists after the genocide that claimed 800,000 lives.
In this election, Kagame is running against three candidates who all backed him in 2003.
Three new parties, two of which have not been registered by the authorities, were all excluded from the vote and have denounced the election process as a sham, branding Kagame’s challengers as stooge candidates.
However, the challengers vigorously deny the charge and say their programs are similar to those of the RPF only because post-genocide Rwanda needs continuity.
Kagame, promising unity and development, mobilized hundreds of thousands of feverish supporters decked out in the party colors at his US-style campaign rallies, with highlights transmitted on the Internet sites.
His government, thanks partly to generous international funding, has turned around the economy of a country with few natural resources, focusing on services and new technology as well as modernizing agriculture.
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