Rwandan President Paul Kagame on May 28, 2021 in Kigali. SIMON WEHLFART / AFP
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame announced he would run for a fourth term in that country’s Great Lakes region presidential election scheduled for 2024. “I am pleased with the trust that the Rwandans have placed in me. I will always serve them as much as I can. Yes, I am indeed a candidate,” Mr Kagame, 65, told the French-language magazine Jeune Afrique, published on September 19. The Rwandan government announced in March that it would synchronize the dates of the presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled to take place in August 2024.
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Kagame has not been open about his intentions, but he made controversial constitutional changes that would give him a third term and could allow him to rule until 2034. Former rebel leader Paul Kagame has been the country’s de facto leader since late 1994. He returned to power in elections in 2003, 2010 and 2017 with more than 90% of the vote. So far, only the leader of the green opposition party, Frank Habineza, has announced his candidacy for 2024.
The outgoing president’s announcement that he would run again was “no surprise,” he told AFP. “We are not afraid of him, we are improving our organization as a political party to run a better election campaign than in 2017. We are confident,” he added: “Democracy is a fight, so we will continue to fight democratically” for political space and democracy, the rule of law and human rights in Rwanda. »
“Prisoners in their own country”
Rwanda presents itself as one of the most stable countries on the African continent, but several human rights groups accuse Paul Kagame of ruling in a climate of fear, suppressing dissent and stifling freedom of expression.
In 2021, Paul Rusesabagina, hero of the film Hotel Rwanda and a fierce critic of Kagame, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for “terrorism” after being arrested the previous year under unclear circumstances.
Mr. Rusesabagina, who had lived in exile in the United States and Belgium since 1996, was arrested in Kigali as he stepped off a plane he believed was bound for Burundi. His family described the operation as a kidnapping. The Rwandan government had confirmed that the arrest was “legal” and admitted that it had “facilitated” the transport of Mr Rusesabagina by financing the operation. Paul Rusesabagina was released from prison in March 2023 and returned to the United States following a presidential pardon. In July, he released a video message in which he claimed that Rwandans were “prisoners in their own country.”
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In the 2023 world press freedom ranking compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Rwanda ranks 131st (out of 180 countries).
When asked in July 2022 on France 24 about his candidacy for a new mandate, Paul Kagame replied: “I’m thinking about running for another twenty years, I have no problem with that.” Elections give people the opportunity to vote. »
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Kagame was only 36 years old when his party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, ousted Hutu extremists from power and was accused of being responsible for the genocide that killed some 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, between April and July 1994 moderate Hutu, were murdered.