RPF in last-minute appeal to voters

POLITICAL PARTIES end a month-long campaign for votes today with the RPF-led coalition launching a get-out-and-vote drive by sending short text messages (sms) to voters. The government has declared Monday, September 16, a national public holiday to give Rwandans time to exercise their civic rights to elect their representatives in parliament. The sms was sent out through mobile phone networks starting on Saturday. The coalition is seeking to retain its majority in the 80-member Lower House of Deputies. There are 53 seats to be directly competed for by political parties. The constitution ring-fenced 27 seats for special interest groups, with 24 reserved for women who are elected in the exclusively woman polls. The remaining three seats are shared amongst the youth (2) and persons with physical impairments (1). The youth MPs are elected by the National Youth Councils at district and national levels, eight student representatives from secondary schools and eight from tertiary institutions. According to National Electoral Commission (NEC), 5,953,351 registered voters are eligible to cast their ballots in this year’s parliamentary elections that start on Monday September 16 with the election of directly contested seats and end on Wednesday 18 with voting representatives of special interest groups. Distribution of electoral materials stated on Saturday September 14 to ensure that the exercise starts and ends smoothly, the commission said. The NEC has accredited 1,200 local and foreign observers to monitor the election whose provisional results will be known by Friday September 20. The NEC is mandated to release final results not later than September 25. The foreign observers include a delegation from the African Union. There are 410 candidates each battling for the 53 directly elected seats with nearly half of them women. That is why some political analysts predict that women may retain their majority in the next parliament with 27 seats already reserved for them. Women held 56 per cent of the seats in the last parliament. Rwanda become the first country with the highest women representation in parliament after the 2003 elections in which women took 39 out of 80 seats, or 48.8 per cent after they women snatched 15 additional slots from the 53 directly contested for seats. The numbers have since been growing with women extended their numerical strength in the legislature to 45 (or 56.4), enabling Rwanda break yet another record to became the first country where women outnumber men in parliament. This is against a global average of 19.5% as of 2012, according to statistics by the Inter Parliamentary Union—a global association of parliamentarians. Moreover, some countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands, Belize, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau do not have a single woman in parliament.