On Friday, we were all handed a new book with 365 blank pages, what kind of story are you going to write for yourself? You have already used three pages so it better be a great story, one that you won’t have to regret at the very end of it as having been a waste of space.

As a country, President Paul Kagame wrote us a wonderful preamble on the first page, when he announced what many Rwandans had been waiting for, in the process bringing to an end speculation over the past couple of years about what will happen in the near future.

It is now known that he will stand in 2017. Nine out of ten Rwandans cheered to that. The other one will somehow come to terms with the choice of the majority, after all, that is how democracy works, the mainstream prevails, isn’t it?

Whenever there is a contest for political power and the actors fail to reach consensus, conflict ensues; half the ongoing civil wars obstructing humanity around the world are a result of absence of national consensus.

Ironically, consensus is not that popular as people tend to prefer a bit of drama, pushing and pulling…In a recent argument, a friend told me that consensus is a boring thing, I agreed with her.

However, I also pointed out that the effects of its absence are way more costly than its presence and we have two live examples to that effect, in South Sudan and Burundi.

In many developing democracies, consensus is like a relative who only visits once in five years and gets attacked by the dog at home which mistakes the visitor for an intruder; we need more cases of consensus so that we get used to it and Rwanda is setting that precedent.

We have seen in the past, people being applauded for standing up to resist bad leaders and eventually ousting them through popular uprisings; case in point, Tunisia and Egypt. But how about a situation where people decide to reward a leader for serving them excellently?

Sure, we can agree that it is unusual to find a highly competent and consistently performing politician whose focus is not on the next election but rather the next generation of a nation but in Kagame, Rwandans landed the Holy Grail which they understandably can’t just let go.

When a player scores three goals in the first half, it doesn’t necessarily mean the coach should substitute him with another player especially if they are still energetic to continue playing; there is no harm in keeping on the pitch to score more goals.

In their coaching role, Rwandans have evaluated their high scoring striker and agreed that he is still energetic enough to continue playing and if he scores more goals, it can only hurt the opposition teams. So who is likely to be hurt by Rwanda’s continued progress?

Therefore, there is no harm in Kagame continuing to score more goals for Rwanda as long as Rwandans still want him to play for the team; the home fans are happy to continue cheering their star player because the only way to shut-up hecklers is to keep scoring.

I think Rwanda offers the truest definition of democracy as defined by Abraham Lincoln; the kind of people power that is often missing elsewhere is so overwhelmingly present here.

Right from the process of petitioning parliament, the hundreds of commentaries published in the local press, the constitutional review commission and the subsequent referendum that overwhelmingly backed the amended constitution, you could see a people in charge.

We can safely say that, for a people that can identify good leadership and does everything in their power to retain it, then they can as well be relied on to resist and remove a bad leader from power, in future.

That is the new Rwanda that has emerged from the ashes of the 1994 genocide; a people in charge of their destiny and ready to do the right thing through consensus regardless of what others think of their actions.

For those who enjoy drama and a bit of pushing and pulling, they will find Rwanda’s democracy a bit boring; but to those who put national development first, Rwanda provides the best example of what a politically united people can do for a nation’s progress.

After acknowledging Rwanda’s governance by consensus model, then one can gradually start appreciating the country’s opposition political parties which are often accused of being silent and in agreement with the ruling party.

But if this modus operandi has led the country to major national victories over the last two decades to which everyone is grateful, then where’s the problem? If I sound pragmatic, that is because I am. A good end will always justify the methods.

Similarly, the pragmatic decision by Rwandans to change the constitution and allow Kagame extra-time will gradually be justified as Rwanda continues to score more victories.