The whole world may hate Kagame, but he is the choice of Rwandans

On August 9, Rwandans went to the polls to elect their leader for the next seven years.

Hundreds of journalists were in Rwanda early enough to cover campaign rallies for the four presidential candidates.

There was a very clear distinction in the numbers of people who attended the rallies where the RPF candidate Paul Kagame attracted mammoth crowds compared with the other three presidential candidates, but most of the news briefs filed by international reporters simply chose to ignore this.

Did such omission mean that numbers at rallies did not make news or could have been a result of deliberate selective amnesia?

On the same elections, I read an article in the Washington Post of Tuesday, August 10 by Sudarsan Raghavan, who was probably in Rwanda on the voting day.

In his piece, “Rwandan President leads in preliminary election count,” he wrote that Rwandans had few choices to make.

If the list of four candidates who were contesting was not enough, one wonders as to what number of presidential candidates is permissible in an election.

In developed America where they have only two presidential candidates, that is not seen as having few choices; with four in Rwanda, it becomes an issue.

There is another argument put forward that two opposition parties were banned from taking part in the elections, but the proponents conveniently fail to mention the reasons why the government took that decision so as to imply that there is lack of political space.

The two leaders of the banned parties, Frank Habineza and Ingabire Victoria of The Green party and FDU-Inkingi, respectively, are on record making public utterances aimed at fuelling ethnic divisions among the Rwandan people. Such utterances were the genesis of the 1994 genocide.

On the very first day of her arrival in Rwanda, Ingabire proved to the whole world that she was a genocide denier going by what she said at the genocide site at Gisozi and thereafter.

To create the impression that had the two politicians been allowed to run for the presidency then Kagame would have been seriously threatened is nowhere near reality.

What, indeed, would have been the chances of such parties when competing with the RPF, which has been on the ground for 16 years and has made remarkable progress in the country’s development?

For those who have followed the politics in Rwanda, Faustin Twagiramungu alias Rukokoma was by far a better known politician in the country than Habineza and Ingabire.

In 2003, Twagiramungu contested in the presidential elections and got less than 5 per cent of the vote.

In Europe, French politician and member of the European Parliament Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front Party, was brought to trial in several European countries because of his revisionist assertions as an unapologetic Holocaust denier.

On December 26, 1997, a Paris court sentenced Le Pen for the crime and ordered him to pay $50,000 to publish the text of the court’s decision in a dozen French newspapers, and to pay a large amount of money to 11 of the organisations that had filed the complaint.

Seventeen organisations had sued Le Pen, including the Movement against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples.

Le Pen was also convicted by a Munich court in 1999 of “minimising the Holocaust.”

When Rwanda charges Ingabire in the courts of law for minimising the Rwandan genocide and her revisionist assertions, then how does this become silencing the opposition in the eyes of our European friends?

In 2009, members of the European Parliament teamed together and introduced an amendment dubbed, “anti-Le Pen,” to deny him the opportunity to chair the inaugural meeting of the parliament because of his extremist views. Article 11 of the European Parliament’s rules provided that the oldest member automatically becomes the chair of the body’s opening session, and Le Pen — who was soon clocking 81 — would have met the criteria.

Commenting on the issue, the chairman of the Party of European Socialists Martin Schuz said that, “A holocaust denier cannot be the eldest member of a multinational Parliamentary Assembly.”

What is the rationale, then, of the voices from our European friends suggesting that Ingabire — a genocide denier — is a suitable candidate in the politics of Rwanda? Calling this double standards is an understatement.

When political campaigns and elections in an African state are peaceful, devoid of chaos and violence, then to some outsiders such elections are not democratic, lack real opposition and are not free and fair.

Rwandans deserve a break: they have made their choice known and voted for the RPF led by President Kagame by an overwhelming 93.08 per cent of the vote.

The country was on ground zero in 1994. The RPF stopped the genocide at a time the world was going round and round in semantics about what to call what was going on in Rwanda.

In a record 16 years, what has been achieved is far beyond many countries that have been stable since the 1960s.

Critics have also pointed an accusing finger at Rwandan authorities for the murder of the deputy leader of the Green Party, one Rwisereka, the during campaign period.

The happening was absurd. What is known, though, is that some suspects are in custody while investigations are still going on.

Media outlets branded the man a prominent politician, while information available in his home region is to the contrary.

He was not known one village beyond his own. What threat would such a man have posed to the government?

Then there is this death of a journalist by the name of Rugambage.

The killers — the one who pulled the trigger and the man who paid him to do the job — were arrested and confessed to the crime.

The gun used was also recovered. There is nowhere in their testimony the killers implicated the government. This was a mere revenge killing.

Both deaths are regrettable because these were innocent citizens. Jumping to conclusions and criminalising the Rwandan government regardless of available facts and at a time investigations are not yet complete tells of a sinister motive.

Press freedom

There is also talk of lack of press freedom in Rwanda, with media watchdogs blacklisting the country’s leadership.

It is a well known fact that in 1994, the media in Rwanda played a major role in fuelling ethnic divisions and incited people to kill each other.

The infamous “Hutu Ten Commandments” were published by a newspaper, Kangura. Radio Mille Collins (RTLM), through its announcements to Interahmwe militias, called on Hutus to hunt down Tutsis and kill them. The memories are still fresh in people’s minds.

Had there been no hate media, probably some lives would not have been lost.

The government of Rwanda has availed a compilation of articles published by the banned newspapers and the messages contained in them are not that different from the 1994 hate media.

Critics are silent about this and simply focus on the ban.

Is this the kind of media international media watchdogs and other critics are dying to see in Rwanda in the name of media freedom?

Rwandan laws are clear. There is no known newspaper that was banned or a journalist questioned for giving alternative views on the government’s development agenda.

Media freedom that promotes ethnicity, that calls for the army to revolt, that predicts doom and instills fear in the population, is probably exercised on another planet where Rwanda does not belong.

Media freedom neither empowers journalists to be above the law of the land where they operate, nor provides liberty to publish or make utterances that incite ethnic hatred or cause public insecurity.

Incidentally, I did not hear any loud voices from media watchdogs in 1994 condemning hate media that was state-sponsored.

Secondly, I have not heard their voices on the Media Trial, which is going on at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha.

Does the silence probably suggest that Hassan Ngeze, the Editor of Kangura, Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of the hate radio station RTLM, and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza who are facing charges at the ICTR of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide are falsely accused journalists who were exercising press freedom?

Should we make our own choices or listen and humbly obey what outsiders want?

Gerald Mbanda is First Secretary at the Rwanda High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. E-mail: mbandagerald@hotmail.com