With less than two weeks to go before the Francophonie organisation (OIF) elects its new leader, opponents of Rwanda’s candidacy to the top post have increased their tempo in muddying the waters. The more the likelihood of Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo clinching the seat becoming more evident, the louder the noise and distraction. The old story that Rwanda had divorced from French, simply because it also adopted English and Kiswahili as part of the four official languages, has failed to hold. But they are not letting up. Social media has been set on fire. Nowhere was it more evident than when, at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the African Union held a reception to reiterate Africa’s support for Mushikiwabo’s candidacy, an event that was attended by nearly every African foreign minister. A similar event called by Madagascar, the outgoing Chair of OIF, the incoming Chair, Armenia, as well as the OIF secretariat received a very resounding cold shoulder and the incident was not lost to close observers. Rwanda’s opponents have run out of options and are ready to cling on anything that paints the country in bad light.
