Presidential polls: RPF holds primaries in sectors

RWANDA Patriot Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) on Saturday conducted party primaries as they continue to search for the flagbearer in the forthcoming presidential election. The primaries were taken to the sector level after they were successfully conducted at the village and cell levels the previous weekend. At the various polling sites around Kigali, the process, which started in the afternoon after the monthly Umuganda exercise, went on without a hitch and was concluded in about two hours. At Kacyiru Sector in Gasabo District, the process started at 3pm, with all votes going to Paul Kagame, the chairperson of RPF-Inkotanyi and President of the Republic. “All the contestants that had come from the different cells in our sector decided to leave their votes for our chairman because of his track record. It now means that that he will be our candidate at the district level,” said Patrice Ndaga, who presided over the exercise in the sector. Ndaga is also the head of good governance in RPF-Inkotanyi committee at the sector level. He said, as party cadres in the sector, it was not surprising that all the 215 voters settled for one candidate, President Kagame, saying it would be difficult for anyone to challenge him. “There is a lot of unfinished business that we want him to accomplish for the people of Rwanda,” he said. It was the same scenario in Kimihurura Sector, also in Gasabo District, where 100 per cent of the votes cast went to President Kagame in the polls conducted at the sector headquarters. Francine Mukandori, one of the candidates that had been voted from the cell level, said she had decided to give all her votes to Kagame, saying she has managed to get where she is because of the President’s exceptional leadership. “It would be self-contradictory on my part if I had not supported him to carry our party’s flag. Our chairman is revered by many, including foreigners because of what he has managed to achieve,” she said. Speaking to The New Times, Wellars Gasamagera, the RPF commissioner for political mass mobilisation, who was in charge of the exercise, said that the activity had gone on peacefully in all sectors where they had received reports. “Today (Saturday), elections were concluded in at least 250 out of the 416 sectors across the country and those that did not conduct them will do so on Sunday [yesterday],” said Gasamagera. Gasamagara said they had not yet managed to tally all the results since not all the sectors had conducted elections on Saturday. The candidates from the sectors will contest at the district level on June 3 and from here they will go to the provincial level before the RPF candidate is confirmed by the party congress at the national level. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Presidential polls: RPF holds primaries in sectors