KIGALI - Failing to get the required number of women in its Executive Committee, lack of full regional representation and sharing the same name as an international organisation operating in Rwanda were enough reasons to block Parti Social Ideal (PSI) from being registered.

This was revealed to The New Times yesterday by, the Minister of Local Government (MINALOC) Protais Musoni.
"This is the reason why we have not registered the party,” Musoni said yesterday on phone.

Last Wednesday, the Cabinet endorsed MINALOC’s decision not to register PSI among political parties because it had not met what was required by the law governing political parties in Rwanda.

The minister said that founders of the Parti Social Ideal (Ideal Social Party) did not meet a requirement that all political parties get at least 30 percent women in the Executive Committee of the party.

He also said that the group did not have enough members from four districts of the country yet the law requires a representation of at least five members from each district.

"I wrote to him to explain some of the requirements he had not met,” the minister said referring to Bernard Ntaganda, the new party’s founder. 

He explained that another reason why the ministry could not register Ntaganda’s party was because its acronym, PSI, was the same as that of Population Services International (PSI), an international organisation operating in Rwanda.

"He [Ntaganda] even wrote back accepting some of the errors,” Musoni revealed.

But Ntaganda claimed last week that the party provided all the requirements that MINALOC had earlier required.

"I had met all the requirements,” he said, admitting that some of the clarifications they had asked him to give concerned identifications of some of his party’s members and his party’s acronym.

"I am now going to go back to the ministry and ask them to tell me what else I am missing, we can not give up,” he added, explaining that he had corrected all the errors.

Ends