Since the end of the civil war and the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994, Rwanda’s ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), has dominated the political space. Its leader, Paul Kagame, scored upwards of 90% in the previous three presidential elections, and this week appears to have beaten his own record, with provisional results showing that he has won 99.15% of the vote. But this victory has been won while excluding several prominent opponents from standing – including me. This makes the just-concluded elections no different to previous ones, and only underscores the country’s lack of democracy.
In 2010, I willingly returned to Rwanda from exile in the Netherlands with the intention of registering my political party and running in the presidential election scheduled later that year. But I was arrested immediately after openly criticising the Rwandan government’s reconciliation policy in relation to the 1994 genocide, and convicted following a trial that was widely condemned as politically motivated and grossly unfair.
