Another electoral cycle is upon us. Rwandans head back to the polls to pick their representatives in the Lower House come September. A total of 53 seats will be up for grabs through universal suffrage, while another 27 will be filled with representatives of special interest groups, namely women (24), the youth (two), and persons living with disabilities, with one slot. With a little less than two months to the polling day (Sept. 2 for Rwandans in the Diaspora and Sept. 3 for elections in the country), potential candidates are gearing up for the campaigns, with both political organisations and independent politicians moving to get themselves ready for the campaigns. Over the last couple of days, the governing Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) has been conducting a nomination process at the grassroots level that climaxed Saturday when party members in each of the country’s 30 districts nominated four people (two men and two women) for the upcoming elections. The four were chosen from candidates who had been fronted from the cell level. In the coming days, the RPF Secretariat will go on to vet each of the candidates nominated through the intra-party nomination process before coming up with 80 candidates to constitute the party’s official list of candidates for the parliamentary polls. Internal democracy in political parties is healthy and highly encouraged for any country. It allows as many party members as possible to participate in the electoral process; most importantly, in deciding who will eventually represent them – in this case in parliament. RPF conducted similar primaries last year ahead of the August presidential elections. It’s an approach that encourages participation of the ordinary people in political parties’ governance and decision-making processes. One of the benefits of intra-party democracy is that it increases the chance of political parties to choose the right people to represent them and their (party) members at the national level. In Rwanda, intra-party democracy is even more significant considering that, once elected, every Member of Parliament is required to represent the interests of all Rwandans – equally. Other political parties in the country should also embrace this approach in their nomination process with view to further cement our democracy.
