Incumbent President Paul Kagame is on course to winning a landslide victory in Friday’s Rwanda presidential poll, with 40 per cent of results announced so far. The RPF-Inkotanyi candidate has swept all the country’s 30 districts, with provisional figures suggesting he’ll shatter even his past victory margins. Nyagatare, Kamonyi, Kirehe, Nyarugenge, Rwamagana and Kayonza districts each handed Kagame over 99 per cent of the votes cast in the partial results announced by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Friday night. Provisional figures show that Kagame, who first became president in 2000, received at least 97 per cent of votes cast in each district. In Rwanda’s first multiparty presidential polls in 2003, Kagame won by 95.05, while he got 93 per cent in the 2010 poll. Kagame’s candidacy this time around was backed by eight opposition parties, some of which fielded candidates of their own in previous polls. Independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana and Frank Habineza, of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, are neck-and-neck, with the former marginally ahead in the partial results. NEC is yet to announce partial results from the Diaspora where more than 44,000 citizens cast their votes on Thursday, a day ahead of the main vote inside the country. Kagame has previously won the Diaspora vote by a landslide. The commission is expected to release more results tonight while all the provisional results are expected to be published Saturday. Kagame ran on a platform of his impressive track record and a promise to continue on the path of the country’s transformation process. The incumbent led a rebel movement that stopped the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and went on to spearhead the country’s dramatic turnaround in across all sectors. Nearly 7 million Rwandans participated in the poll. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
