allAfrica.com: Central Africa: Rwanda's Kagame Promises Fair Election, Cautious on Prospects for Peace in Great Lakes Region (Page 1 of 5)

Central Africa: Rwanda's Kagame Promises Fair Election, Cautious on Prospects for Peace in Great Lakes Region

Rwandans go to the polls next month in the first presidential elections since the genocide in 1994, when between 800,000 and one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists, most of them hacked to death with machetes.

A front runner in the August ballot is Rwanda’s leader for the past nine years, President Paul Kagame. Kagame led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the army that swept to power almost a decade ago, triggering an exodus of Hutus across the borders into neighbouring Congo, blamed by Kagame for the mass murder in Rwanda.

Attending the African Union (AU) summit in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, last week, Kagame gave an in-depth interview to Nicholas Kotch of Reuters, the BBC’s Solomon Mugera and allAfrica’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

He touched on strained relations between Rwanda and its neighbours and erstwhile allies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda and also offered his assessment of the resurgence of fighting across the border in Burundi and the overall security situation in the Great Lakes region.

The first presidential election in Rwanda since the 1994 genocide is scheduled next month. President Kagame, you are a candidate and clearly have considerable backing. But some of your one-time allies, and now political opponents, including Faustin Twagiramungu - your former prime minister - allege that they are not being treated fairly. They want those polls postponed. What is your response?

My response is that the same person, Faustin Twagiramungu, way back, some years back, was making a noise that we were delaying bringing about elections. So I’m surprised that when elections come that he starts asking for a postponement. So this is a contradiction in a sense.

But what we have tried to do is to spend a lot of time, the last two years, preparing the constitution which involved all Rwandans, including those living outside. And it was very clear that after the constitution we were going for elections. And we have been making it clear at every stage that we are heading for elections. Therefore the timing cannot really depend on Twagiramungu’s wishes. The timing should depend on the general views and wishes of the people of Rwanda and I think the people of Rwanda are happy that we are ending the transition and moving forward on a more firm democratic path.

But has there been a level playing field for all the political players in the run-up to the elections?

I believe it is going to be, because everything is in place. We are going to have the whole of August campaigning. Twagiramungu is already in the country and others are in the country. They have been there, free to do whatever they should be doing. Of course I’m sure that many of them are worried because they lost a lot of time staying outside Rwanda. And the fact that some of us stayed in Rwanda trying to solve the problems and putting measures in place to allow free and fair elections, means they may see us as having an advantage. But if there is an advantage in that, so be it. It’s not our fault that we stayed in the country and they went out of the country.

And you know, definitely in politics - it may not be so scientific, in a sense, but being elected also depends on whether you are appreciated for one reason and another. And if the people of Rwanda appreciate people for having stayed with them and having worked with them to resolve different problems, then I’m sure Twagiramungu would want to look at it that this is not a level playing field. But I believe it is and the rules are very clear and they are fair and if everyone plays by those rules, then we are supposed to have free and fair elections.

A nine-year transition is a long time, with you in power as an unelected leader. So coming up to the elections you definitely have an advantage, don’t you? You say others stayed out of the country and you remained in Rwanda, but perhaps they felt that they weren’t really welcome back home.

You see, you are putting us into a situation where you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Because if we had said let’s spend another five years carrying out a campaign, then for me it will be 9+5. And for somebody else it would be five, because he has just started. So in any case I would be ahead of someone who is just starting five in the country.

So there is no situation where you are going to have, in that type of analysis, a level playing field.

Are you confident of victory?

Well I am confident that the process will go very well and I’m confident that Rwandans are capable of making a good choice. I am a candidate and I have no reason to believe that Rwandans won’t appreciate what I have done for and with them.

Turning now to the situation in neighbouring Burundi. There has been an upsurge in fighting around the capital, Bujumbura, and bombardment of the city by some of the rebel factions. What’s your assessment of the situation, which had been declared as a conflict on the wane?

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