Kezio-Musoke David
30 August 2008
Parliamentary campaigns for the September elections of Rwanda's legislators kicked off last week with a grand coalition, led by the ruling party, Rwanda Patriotic Front, tipped to win.
RPF kicked off its campaign trail with a colourful launch presided over by the party's chairman, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame.
President Kagame said the ruling party's leadership had championed women's emancipation, education for all Rwandan citizens, equitable justice and universal health access.
He said the party's pledges in the 2003 manifesto would be met by the year 2010, the same year Rwandans will be voting in the second multi-party presidential elections since the 1994 genocide.
President Kagame is currently serving his first seven-year term as president, a position to which he was elected in 2003.
Rwanda's parliament, which is bicameral in nature with a lower chamber -- the chamber of deputies -- and an upper chamber -- the Senate -- is set to have a new face by the end of September. Fifty three Members of Parliament, usually referred to as Deputies, are to be voted in on September 15.
Others set to be elected to the 80-member chamber include 24 female members elected by provincial councils, two by the National Youth Council and one by the Federation of the Associations of the Disabled.
The chamber of deputies was created under a Rwandan Constitution adopted by the 2003 referendum.
The National Electoral Commission (NEC) announced that campaigns would take 20 days until September 13.
The list released by the commission last week shows that there are two officially recognised opposition political parties that have already presented candidates for the polls. While the Social Democratic Party (PSD) has presented a list of 64 candidates, the Liberal Party (PL) has submitted 62 candidates.
During the RPF's campaign launch, an 80-member list of candidates, 14 of whom are drawn from five other political parties, was unveiled with 35 aspirants being women.
The parties which joined the RPF-led coalition include the Party for Progress and Concord (PPC), the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), Islamic Democratic Party (PDI), Rwandan Socialist Party (PSR) and the Democratic Union of the Rwandan People (UDPR).
It is the second time that RPF has entered into a coalition with other parties for the parliamentary elections. During the 2003 polls, the party led a coalition that saw it get 73.8 per cent of the votes and win 33 parliamentary seats.
Four of the parties in that coalition won a modest number of seats. CDP got three, PDI two and PSR and UDPR one seat each respectively. Only two opposition parties managed to get the required minimum of 5 per cent of the vote.
On Monday last week, President Kagame met with representatives of the European Union Election Observer Mission to Rwanda. The group included the EU's chief election observer to Rwanda, Michael Cashman, and was accompanied by David McRae, the European Commission Head of Delegation in Kigali.
The EC, which shunned the electoral process in Rwanda in 2003 has this time round spearheaded the Joint International Basket Fund Partners Group, a donor umbrella group that has committed itself to a $10.2 million grant to support all electoral activities, including the senate and the 2010 presidential elections.
The EC announced that 40 per cent of that money would finance the September elections. NEC has already secured $8.5 million from the government's 2008 budget for the elections.
"The president was keen and enthusiastic. We told him that the observers are here to conduct themselves according to the international code of conduct," Mr Cashman said.
The meeting comes in the wake of allegations raised by NEC indicating that the EU, which has been in the country for a month, was engaged in activities that are contrary to their mandate. The observer mission has, however, dismissed the reports.
According to the Rwanda News Agency (RNA), some three observers, French nationals Olivier Neola and Emmanuel Geny as well as Spaniard Maria Del Mar Bermudez are still waiting for the government to issue them with visas.
Rwanda is yet to renew diplomatic relations with France. The country has also in the past locked horns with Spain after a Spanish judge issued indictments against Rwandan government officials for crimes allegedly committed during the 1994 genocide.
Members of the civil society have also launched an Election Observation Mission of close to 600 members to boost the foreign observers and the NEC. The mission, the Rwandan Civil Society Platform Observation Mission, said it will observe the election as an impartial and independent body.
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