FDU Ingabire’s future plans are remote from today’s Rwanda

In our last article, we promised our readers an update on FDU party and its leadership’s endeavors towards the 2010 presidential elections in which they vowed to take part. We commended their initiative as a remarkable development as, at a long last, they have come to realize that not only was their abusive gesticulations against the current regime while sitting comfortably in western capitals was in the least counter-productive, but also would like to believe that they have somehow matured enough to realize that Rwanda would be built only by Rwandans themselves and moreover in Rwanda. Now we wonder whether we didn’t rejoice too soon! Indeed, during the party President’s (Ingabire Umuhoza Victoire) tour campaign last month around Europe and America, her discourse reflected the same old ethnic based propaganda as if we were in the Gregoire Kayibanda’s 1960’s or the pre-genocide times of the “Hutu power”government. Their plans tell it all, as she disclosed during a meeting where she tried to rally Rwandans living in Rouen, France on July 4th, 2009. She stated that their first objective was “to change the Constitution, most of all, its article 13 relating to genocide ideology”. The reasons being that “in Rwanda, children are being taught a history of not our time; any one who disagrees with RPF and Kagame’s regime is accused of genocide ideology, children, students, employees, all are thus fired from schools, employment, and others are brought before Gacaca courts. We must therefore change the regime.” Does Rwanda have different “histories”, that of our time and another of other times? Doesn’t she believe that genocide has been committed in Rwanda? Doesn’t she know that genocide acts are rooted precisely into genocide ideologies? Such an intelligent woman surely knows all that but may only be hoodwinked by personal ambitions at whatever expense even to the level of the nation of Rwanda! Targeting the removal of this article as a first priority is nothing else than an appeal to all the guilty conscious of the Tutsi genocide crime and pure genocide denial. This is stated by someone who, on April 30, 2009 during her 5 minute intervention on CANVAS, the Flemish TV in Belgium, claimed without a blink that “she wants to reconcile Rwanda and feels that she can do better than President Paul Kagame.” Obviously, she does not know or rather she prefers to dismiss the whole purpose and tremendous achievements of the Gacaca courts that reveals the truth of what happened and who took what part in it, thus allowing some to access justice and others to redeem their guilty consciousness, the only possible way for a true reconciliation. She had earlier sustained that the article violates the 1966 International Convention on Civil rights stipulating that “…every body has a right to freedom of expression, including the right to receive, seek for and broadcast information and ideas of any kind, in writing, orally or in painting, or by any other form he/she chooses.” So according to her, the likes of RTLM, Kangura and other Nyiramacibiris were doing nothing else than expressing their rights when they were calling for the extermination of the Tutsi and guiding the interahamwe militias towards the hideouts a few of them had managed to reach..! FDU’s second stated objective is to “install an inter-Rwandese dialogue: there must be a policy of reconciliation, mutual understanding between ethnic groups and power sharing…” Amazingly enough, the infamous framework is no longer called “inter-Rwandese Dialogue” but rather “intra-Rwandese Dialogue!” The groups that gathered in Palma de Mallorca- Spain from April 30 to May 3, 2009 changed the framework’s denomination on the grounds that “not all components of Rwandan society were represented”. Really! It is never too late to learn, thanks God! The saying that “there is no worse dull than one that does not want to hear” could not be any truer! Do these people want us to believe that they have never heard of every year’s Umushyikirano in which even many people from the Diaspora take part and where views and ideas about our country’s past, present and future are freely exchanged on? Have they never heard of Ubusabane that take place every now and then all around the country whenever the population has some achievement to celebrate? We cannot help but think that the real reason these people fail to see such events as new forms of dialogue and reconciliation mediums among Rwandans is only that there is no ethnic label attached to them. The third objective is a clear testimony of this and of the stated boundless personal ambitions of the FDU leader.“To get rid of regional and ethnic politics: Rwandans have had enough of ethnicities; Hutu, Tutsi, Twa and the Kiga-Nduga antagonism. Nobody chose to be born as a Hutu or a Tutsi; nobody chose to be born in Nduga or Rukiga. We must part with the politics of exclusion in leadership (where one ethnic group monopolizes the leadership and the wealth of the country). This very statement shows how far behind these people have been left by events in current Rwanda. They are still talking as if we were in the previous regimes when the evils they describe were the norm. They are not aware, though it is hard to believe, that the mention of this historically charged categorization of Rwandans have been long-removed from any official identification document, the latest being the identity card that identify citizens only as Rwandans as opposed to the old one which served to identify those who were to be killed during the 1994 Tutsi genocide. Rwandan authorities know well that it would be difficult to completely get rid of those ethnic labels in just the last fifteen years considering the country’s long traumatic past history that indoctrinated many among the current generations, but it strongly believes that it is a curse that Rwandans can and must overcome with time. It is believed that the upcoming generation which is growing without being reminded at every corner and in every conversation of which ethnic group they belong to have a golden opportunity of not succumbing to such a backward mentality. Unfortunately, as long as the likes of FDU-Inkingi continue the same obsolete discourse always seeing things through ethnic lenses - during the gathering in Rouen, she uttered such a gross and incongruent lie that “today in Rwanda, the schools are open to only one ethnic group she could however not name! - would delay this noble cause but can never fail it for sure. Rwandans of today are more than determined to write their new history by building a solid forward-looking society. As for the likes of Victoria Ingabire we could only wish for their coming soon so that, if they still have any remaining conscience of love for motherland, they could confront their old images of a Rwanda in their own heads to the real Rwanda of today and may be adapt their political ambitions to the real context and engage in competition but on a more serene basis. In our later writing, we will continue to enlighten our readers about other objectives of this party so that when they eventually put their feet in the country, one observes and follows their campaign from a better informed and objective stand point. Beware that extremist ideologies and Personal ambitions that surpass the common interests and unity of a people can never build but rather destroy nations. Let us all unite in saying: Never Again. Ends