Preparations are in full gear for Rwandans inside and outside the country to contribute to the nation’s democratic cause by voting for the country’s president for just the second time after the 1994 genocide. Dissident voices still doubt a democratic process is in place.
To vote in Canada, Rwandans will have to travel to Rwanda’s High Commission office in Ottawa, where the polling station will be.
Rukumbura, who lives in Brampton, Ont., northwest of Toronto, will be making the trek on Aug. 8 because he says the diaspora’s vote might be minimal, but symbolically important in a young democracy like Rwanda.
“Rwanda has achieved a lot in the last 16 years,” he said. “We need to develop a healthy democracy and participating in the voting process is a step into the right direction.”
Neither the government nor the embassy will provide transport for those going to vote, so it will prove to be a challenge depending on where people live across Canada. But it also serves to show the determination to contribute to the democratic process and make one’s voice count, Rukumbura said.
“Rwandans here understand why this is important and are actually excited about the elections and ready to take up the challenge,” he said.
Four candidates are currently vying for the highest office, while three aspirant opposition figures have failed to field their candidacy.
One is in prison accused of divisionism, another is under house arrest awaiting trial for terrorism and divisionism charges, while the third has repeatedly failed to organize his party’s first general assembly.
The 2010 presidential elections will take place in Rwanda on Aug. 9. They are organized and overseen by an independent National Electoral Commision.
Candidates include incumbent President Paul Kagame of the ruling party, Rwanda Patriotic Front, who has been in power over the last decade and won an overwhelming 95 per cent of the votes in the 2003 presidential polls.
No figures were readily available from Rwanda’s High Commission in Canada as to how many Rwandans have been registered to vote in Canada.
But statistics from Rwanda’s NEC show there are 24,799 Rwandans who live in the diaspora — 87.7 per cent of whom have reached the voting age and almost all of them have fulfilled the conditions to take part in the electoral process.
Voting requirements include having a valid national ID or passport.
The commission has given members of the diaspora a chance to vote one day before the election to allow enough time for their voting results to be forwarded in Kigali on time before final publication of poll results.
Kagame’s challengers include deputy-speaker of parliament Jean Damascene Ntawukuliryayo of the Social Democratic Party, vice-President of Senate Prosper Higiro of the Liberal Party and a sole female candidate Alvera Mukabaramba.
Mukabaramba ran against Kagame in 2003 but dropped out of the race just days shy of the voting date, giving all her support to him.
Events leading up to this year’s elections have left opponents of the Kagame regime worried of how free and fair the process will be.
A series of grenade explosions rocked the capital city late January and early February, killing and injuring ordinary citizens. An American law professor was arrested, jailed and later released on bail over genocide denial charges. A former army chief of staff survived an assassination attempt in June after he fell out with Kagame and fled to South Africa.
An independent journalist was shot dead in late June in Kigali. His newspaper, along with another tabloid, both critical of the Kigali regime, were shut down by the government media regulatory body. An official from the yet-to-be-registered Rwanda Green Party, was killed in the south of Rwanda in mid-July.
Kigali persistently denied any involvement and police carried out investigations. Suspects have been arrested and some pleaded guilty. But critics like Gallican Gasana are not convinced.
“There is no political space,” said the Rwandan living in Brampton, Ont.
Gasana, a permanent secretary general of the AMAHORO-People’s Congress political party operating in exile, said he won’t vote, just as he didn’t in 2003.
He accused Kagame of “running a one man show” and using his long-term subordinates as “stooge” candidates to portray a “fake” democratic facade.
“Even when they are campaigning, none of them dares criticize Kagame or show how they’ll overdo him.”
Rwanda has not seen a lot of democratic voting in the past. After obtaining independence from Belgium in 1962, the country went through ethnic-stricken hatred, forcing many to remain refugees in neighbouring countries and across the globe.
In 1973, army general Juvenal Habyarimana ousted the then-civilian president in a military coup and established a one-party regime where he would be a unique candidate.
Habyarimana was killed in April 1994 and a genocide against ethnic Tutsi took place, which would claim as many as a million lives and would be stopped by the RPF rebels, led by Paul Kagame.
It would take at least nine years for the transitional government to organize the first pluralist elections. Only two independent candidates tried to challenge Kagame in 2003 and unsuccessfully so, while all political parties rallied behind him and his RPF.
If he wins the upcoming elections, Kagame will be entering his final seven-year constitutional mandate in office.
Critics and rights watchdogs have accused him of running an authoritarian regime that tolerates no dissent, but the Kigali government continuously dismisses the allegations, insisting instead on economic strides and a relatively peaceful environment that have been on the raise and brought praise over the last 16 years.