It is election season in Rwanda. Campaigns are a little over three weeks away and polling another three weeks later. But you wouldn’t know it, especially if you are used to what happens elsewhere in the region. On May 17, President Paul Kagame, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) candidate for president of the republic filed his nomination papers with the electoral commission. They were verified and he went back to work. The electoral commission was left to attend to other electoral matters. You probably learnt about it in the evening news of that day. It was just another event of a normal workday. Life in the city did not come to a standstill, as happens in other places, as long processions of the party bigwigs and crowds ferried in from across the country wound their way to the polls body headquarters, and others lined the streets to cheer or jeer, sing the candidates’ praises or hurl insults and other obscenities. A few days later, Frank Habineza, president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, also presented his papers. Again, no fanfare. It was business as usual. No police in full riot gear, either, waiting to break up a rowdy crowd of supporters. There was no danger of him losing his shoes or having his shirt ripped off his back in the expected confrontation with regime protection officers. It simply does not happen here. Habineza presents himself as an opposition candidate. However, he has not yet earned the title of main opposition leader or fiercest critic of President Kagame. Those who bestow those titles have not deemed it fit to elevate him to that lofty position. Perhaps he is not rabid enough or does not beg for their favours. Other candidates for president still have two days to file their nomination papers with the electoral commission. Herman Manirareba, an independent candidate, already did, but he was told he did not have the required signatures of supporter from all the thirty districts of Rwanda. He vowed to rectify that and be back before the May 30 deadline. The major interest is, of course, the presidential election. But there are parliamentary elections as well. Nominations for these have also been done in the same manner, without drama. Different political parties have presented lists of their candidates for election as members of parliament’s chamber of deputies. Even PS-Imberakuri that prides itself as an opposition party and has only two members in the current parliament was able to present a list of 80 candidates. Perhaps the term party leader, Christine Mukabunani, has spent in the August House has persuaded her of the value of being inside and the folly of making noise from outside. In spite of this, you will still hear some people say that Rwanda’s political space is closed. Not when you see the competition or the people willing to leave comfortable jobs for a shot at a seat in parliament. Of course, like anywhere else in the world, the law may bar some people from seeking or holding elective office. Convicted criminals and clowns, for instance, all kinds of charlatans, or the deranged. Those that take it upon themselves to decide what is best for us, including who should govern us, tout candidates who fall in one or all of these categories. One such person is a mad priest who is doing his sorcery in Europe. He reportedly heads a government in exile and one wonders what he would be doing contesting in an election organised by a government he does not recognise, against which he has, in fact, rebelled. Another is a delusional woman. She was convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison. She was pardoned after serving slightly over half her jail term. Now Victoire Ingabire wants to be president of Rwanda. You would think she is confusing clemency with absolution. But no, she knows better. Which is why she has gone to the courts to have them legally absolve her. Which is also the reason she has now taken her case to foreign media. No surprises there. They are the same people who helped raise her profile and convinced her she was such an exceptional figure on whom the salvation of Rwanda depends. Foreign Policy magazine on May 22 published an article by Ingabire in which she sets out to discredit the government of Rwanda, present herself as the victim of oppression, but also an alternative to the current leadership. In the process, however, she tells several lies. First, she presents the July polls as only a presidential election. That is where her interest is and she knows it is what the foreign media focusses on. She does not mention it is a general election in which members of parliament will be elected. Conveniently, of course. Second, she claims she is a victim of suppression and has been barred from participating in the elections because of that. Also, that she is being punished for dissent. The truth is she a convicted felon. Promoting division and hatred, and espousing a genocide ideology cannot be defined as dissent. Ingabire rounds off her article with a campaign pitch in which she lists what she would do if elected. Problem is, she is making the promises to foreigners through Foreign Policy magazine. In doing so, she confirms her place among pathetic African politicians who think they can get to power by appealing to outsiders. In effect, their constituency and whose interests they would obviously serve is a foreign one. In another sense, however, this appears to be a calculated move. She knows she cannot legally be a candidate in the upcoming election, but she wants to be the absent presence on the ballot.
