Observers: Polls were peaceful, free and transparent

Observers of the just concluded parliamentary polls have said their impression is that the process was held in a peaceful atmosphere, was free and transparent. The head of the African Union Election Observation mission now in Rwanda, Aichatou Mindaoudou Souleymane, told reporters that the polls were calm with people voting without any hindrance. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Niger gave what she considered her preliminary impression of the electoral process shortly after paying a courtesy call on Senate president, Bernard Makuza, in Kigali. She said: “The impression we have, and I think everybody has, is that the election was really quiet and they had a big attendance by the population because yesterday [Monday] we visited many polling stations and it was really calm and people voted”. “Even the counting went well. So, this is our first impression, but on Thursday we shall have our first official press conference to tell you in details what we have witnessed.” Souleymane dispelled allegations about low participation of the youth. “We deployed 11 teams all over the country and we remained here in Kigali. Yesterday we visited a polling station. What I saw in the polling station, or mainly the people that I saw, were mainly the youth.” The AU election observer mission comprises of 35 people who were deployed to various locations in the country. Before the elections begun, the AU spent almost a week observing the manner in which the elections were being prepared. Marie Immaculée Ingabire, the Chairperson of Transparency International Rwanda (TI Rwanda), is one of the local observers. She said everything was well-organised and voting started very early was peacefully. “By around 11 o’clock it was really over apart from very few people who were still streaming into the poll stations. But by noon, the poll station facilitators were left with nothing to do but just seat and wait. “The National Electoral Commission (NEC) also did a good job as regards preparations and everything else it had to do. Voting material was delivered to poll stations on time and in good order. And then I noted the freedom and transparency everywhere I went. I only observed one small hitch whereby some voters were poorly folding the ballot paper but this was corrected.” On Monday, 7.1 million Rwandans went to the poll to elect 53 MPs for the 80-member Lower House of Parliament. The lawmakers are chosen through universal suffrage, or the right of almost all adults to vote in political elections. This has been Rwanda’s fourth such poll since the end of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The President of Rwanda Civil society Platform, Jean Léonard Sekanyange, also said the poll went well. “Starting yesterday [Monday] and the day before, in general, everything went well. Everything is smooth. We haven’t received any complaints from any of our agents posted in every corner of the country,” he noted. According to the National Electoral Commission (NEC), nearly 2,500 polling stations were set up across the country, with more than 17,000 polling rooms and about 75,000 electoral volunteers.

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Observers: Polls were peaceful, free and transparent