Kagame speaks out on Rwanda after him

President Paul Kagame has shared his thoughts on what Rwanda could turn out to be after his presidency. Kagame, 66, has been president since 2000, and is credited with overseeing a sustained effort to transform the country, from growing the economy at unprecedented rates, to rebuilding the social fabric and inspiring national unity. The president was last week picked by his political party, RPF-Inkotanyi, to be its flagbearer in the upcoming presidential poll, due July this year. In an interview with NTV Kenya, that was aired on Thursday, March 14, Kagame was asked what he felt about his party fronting him again, and he responded that he sometimes accepts such responsibility “painfully.” “I said (to the party members) ‘I accept this responsibility sometimes very painfully, but I also accept because when I look back, like all of you, at the circumstances of our country, the context is completely different from other situations we know of,’” he said. Struggle in president’s mind “That is when I get caught up and find myself accepting. So, there is this struggle in my own mind as a person,” he added. Kagame noted that he has discussed the issue of a successor with his party several times but admitted that he has found himself in a situation where he must accept to continue carrying the burden. The president, however, said that he asked RPF members to take it upon themselves to look for the person who would replace him. “I told them that they don’t have to wait for me to come and choose who should replace me. I said, ‘you do it yourselves and live with the consequences of your choice,’” he said. ALSO READ: Kagame re-elected as RPF-Inkotanyi Chairman Citing the experience from the immediate post-Genocide government, Kagame said he would not want to pick the next president himself. “When we were selecting somebody who would become president post-Genocide, they came for me and I refused because I felt I wasn’t prepared for it. I said, ‘if it comes, it will come in the future but not now.’” He added that, at a personal level, he didn’t want anybody to ever think he fought (in the liberation war) to be president, since he “was not even sure of being alive” at the end of the armed campaign to liberate the people of Rwanda. Learning from Bizimungu decision “They asked me my views, so I gave them my view. I said, ‘this one, maybe, would be the right person,’” he said, reflecting on his advice to the party to install Pasteur Bizimungu as the first post-Genocide president. “Later on, this man (Bizimungu) ran into problems and some people came to me and said, ‘we told you.’ They said ‘we came to you last time and you refused, now how are you going to refuse?’ That is how I became president,” Kagame said of the circumstances that led to his rise to the presidency. Kagame, who led the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) to victory, effectively putting an end to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and liberating the country, was at the time serving as the vice president and defence minister. Bizimungu would be arrested and subsequently sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2004 after he was found guilty of creating a militia, embezzling state funds, and inciting ethnic violence. However, he was released only three years later, in 2007, after Kagame pardoned him. ALSO READ: As we embark on NST 2, out work is clearly cut out Speaking on how Rwanda is likely to navigate the period post the Kagame presidency considering his track record, the president said that “good investment” had been made into the people and institutions to ensure that things will go in the right direction, even after him. ‘Margins of error’ “I think the vision is there, we really have invested in the people, in ourselves, (and) in institutions. We have built institutions, which we keep strengthening to the point that it answers the question of post-Kagame,” he said. ALSO READ: From stench capital, Kigali has become one of the world’s cleanest investment hubs Thanks to that foundation, he said, he was confident the people of Rwanda were in position to eventually come up with someone to lead Rwanda after him. Someone “different” from him, but who could even be better. “That is why there are all these institutions that we have been building, so that, maybe, when somebody is trying to take us wherever, there will be people who say ‘no, that is not where we want to go,’” the president said. Kagame said the environment that has been created can cushion the country from any future shocks. “But you can’t be precise, you can’t be sure. You only hope and think about the margins of error being low to not cause instability.”

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Kagame speaks out on Rwanda after him