After prominent opponents were barred from running, President Paul Kagame was widely expected to win another term. Despite a reputation for autocracy, he enjoys support at home for Rwanda's economic development.
Polls opened in Rwanda on Monday morning for presidential and parliamentary elections as President Paul Kagame's fourth term in office seemed all but assured.
Over nine million Rwandans are eligible to cast their ballot.
The election feature the same two opponents as the last election in 2017, when prominent opposition candidates were also barred from running.
Frank Habineza is the leader of the Democratic Green Party, and in the last election, garnered a mere 0.48% of the vote. Philippe Mpayimana, an independent, was the only other person approved to run out of eight applicants.
Autocracy and infrastructure
Kagame, 66, is seen in turn as an autocrat who swiftly silences any criticism but also as a strong leader who brought the country back to stability after the devastating genocide of 1994. Some 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, died in a period of 100 days. Kagame has been the de facto leader since then and president since 2000.
Abroad, Kagame has been heavily criticized for arbitrarily jailing his political opponents, as well as extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. He has also been accused of stoking unrest in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where a recent UN report says Rwandan troops are fighting alongside M23 rebels in the troubled east.
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With some 65% of Rwanda's population under 30, Kagame is the only leader much of the country has ever known. He has overseen controversial new laws that allow him to rule until at least 2034.
For weeks, the powerful propaganda arm of his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) has been working full-tilt while courts rejected appeals from prominent opposition figures Bernard Ntaganda and Victoire Ingabire to remove previous convictions that effectively disqualified them from running.
Under similar conditions, Kagame won 98.79% of the vote in 2017. Despite reports from the World Bank saying almost half the population lives on less than $2.15 (approximately €1.97) per day, Kagame maintains broad popularity in Rwanda. He is credited with economic growth rates of an average of 7.2% between 2012 and 2022 and the development of infrastructure, including hospitals and roads.
es/rmt (AFP, dpa)
