Leader and Chairman of the Democratic Green Party, Frank Habineza (C) arrives to take part in a political rally in Gihara, Rwanda, on 23 June 2024, ahead of Rwanda’s upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. (Guillem Sartorio / AFP)
- Rwanda goes to the polls with three names on the presidential ballot. One of them has never seen less than 90% of the vote.
- Paul Kagame’s rivals are optimistic nonetheless.
- Rwanda will also have parliamentary elections on 15 July, with just over 30% of seats reserved for women.
On Thursday last week, Frank Habineza, the 47-year-old candidate for Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party, told journalists that after two years of preparations, he was hopeful for a good showing in Rwanda’s 15 July elections.
Hours earlier he had addressed a rally in the Yanze District that – though enthusiastic – had attracted only about a thousand people.
This will be Habineza’s first time on the presidential ballot, but his party contested parliamentary elections in 2018. It won a grand total of two seats.
Former journalist and now independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana (54) will be on the ballot again, after a 2017 race in which he attracted less than 1% of the vote.
He too is optimistic, and earlier in June launched a campaign with a focus on agricultural reform and establishing Rwanda as a unifier working towards a “United States of Africa”.
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The third name on the ballot will be Paul Kagame, the 66-year-old leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front who will, in all likelihood, extend his 23-year term in office again.
All three are now criss-crossing the country in search of votes. In Kigali, however, only Kagame’s posters are noticeable, with hardly any advertising for his two rivals.
That is beside the point, Habineza said.
“It’s not about posters, it’s about our ideas to the people,” he said.
Rwanda has been criticised for not being democratic enough, with Kagame never dropping below 90% since his first election in 2003. But in his first rally in the Musanze District in the northern part of the country, the president told a crowd of about 35 000 that critics didn’t get Rwanda.
He said:
Democracy is often misunderstood or interpreted differently by people, but we have our own understanding based on the unique reality of Rwandans and what needs to change in our lives.
According to Rwanda’s National Electoral Commission (NEC), nine candidates were interested in running for president, but only three qualified.
This year, for the first time, the presidential election will run alongside the legislative elections, with a total of 500 aspirants.
They are courting a relatively young country – with 3.7 million registered young voters in a total registered population of 9.5 million – and many of the winners will be women. Rwanda’s single-House Parliament has among the highest proportions of women in Africa, and 24 seats in the 80-seat Chamber of Deputies are reserved for women.
By the end of last week, there were more than 260 foreign electoral observers accredited for the elections.
The News24 Africa Desk is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The stories produced through the Africa Desk and the opinions and statements that may be contained herein do not reflect those of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
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