KIGALI /KAMPALA - Preliminary election results from the Diaspora released, late Monday, showed that the incumbent, President Paul Kagame, earned a landslide victory of 96.7 percent. Announcing the results, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Chairman, Chrysologue Karangwa, said that, out of the 17,824 registered voters in the Diaspora, 14,242 (78%) were valid while 151 (0.8) votes were void. Of the valid votes, 13,636 people (96.7%) voted for Kagame, the RPF candidate. According to NEC, Dr. Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, the Social Democratic Party( PSD) candidate, came second with 212ballots (1.5%), Prosper Higiro of Liberty Party (PL) came third with 152 votes (1 % ) and the Party for Progress and Concorde (PPC) candidate, Dr Alvera Mukabaramba got the least votes, 122 ballots, (0.8 %). Rwandans living in other East African community member countries outside turned out in large numbers to vote for Kagame. In Kampala, Uganda, the counting was held at the Rwandan High Commission amid a calm and orderly atmosphere.Of the 5,123 Rwandans who voted in Kampala over the weekend, Kagame got 4,928 votes, representing 96.19 %, Higiro and Ntawukuliryayo each got 57 votes, (1.1%), while Mukabaramba got 29 votes equivalent to 0.56 percent. “The whole process was marked by transparency, and from what the results show, a lot of civic education was conducted,” Dr. Davis Kashaka Karegeya, an observer in the exercise said. Meanwhile, Rwanda’s High Commissioner to Tanzania Fatuma Ndangiza told The New Times that from the preliminary results registered, Kagame had scored 97.8 percent of the 800 votes cast. Higiro got 0.8 percent, while Ntawukuliryayo and Mukabaramba each got 0.5 percent. Ndangiza said that the number of voters was slighter lower than expected due to some challenges like, people turning out at the last minute to be registered. Rwandans in Tanzania voted from the Rwandan High Commission in Dar es Salaam while others from Arusha.According to an official at the Nairobi diplomatic mission, Kagame at one of the polling stations got 778 votes of the 858 Rwandans who voted - representing 90.7 percent. His next challenger, Higiro got 14 votes representing 1.6 percent; Ntawukuliryayo got 35 votes representing 4.1 percent while Mukabaramba got 22 votes representing 2.6 percent. The official, who declined to be named, added that the elections were held peacefully at the High Commission, and at another polling station in Mombasa, Kenya. Ends
