By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Diane Rwigara, a fierce critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, has reacted to her disqualification from participating in next month’s presidential election in the East African country, saying she is disappointed.
“Why won’t you let me run? This is the second time you [have] cheat[ed] me out of my right to campaign,” Rwigara who was also disqualified from the 2017 poll stated on her X handle, formerly Twitter.
Only President Kagame and two other politicians, Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party and independent Philippe Mpayimana were cleared by the electoral body to stand for the election.
Rwigara, 42, who is the leader of the People Salvation Movement (PSM), had earlier told the BBC’s Newsday programme that she had hoped to be able to stand this time round.
“I’m representing the vast majority of Rwandans who live in fear and are not allowed to be free in their own country,” she said.
“Rwanda is portrayed as a country where the economy has been growing. But on the ground, it’s different. People do lack the basics of life, food, water, shelter.”
The electoral management body while releasing a provisional list of candidates said Ms Rwigara was disqualified over her failure to provide the correct documentation to show she had no criminal record.
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It also said she had failed to show she had enough support nationwide to stand.
“On the requirement for 600 signature endorsements, she did not provide at least 12 signatures from eight districts,” Oda Gasinzigwa, the electoral commission chief, was quoted as saying.
Another reason the commission gave was that Ms Rwigara had failed to prove she was Rwandan by birth. She once held Belgian citizenship but surrendered it in 2017 before her last bid to become a candidate.
Ms Rwigara however insists that she was born in Rwanda and dismissed all the other grounds for the rejection of her candidacy.
In 2017 she was barred following accusations of forging the signatures of supporters for her application.
Rwigara was imprisoned for more than a year, but was acquitted in 2018 over charges of inciting insurrection and forgery. She said the charges were politically motivated.
In Rwanda, people who have been jailed for more than six months are barred from running in elections.
The two cleared candidates – Habineza and Mpayimana – were also the only candidates approved to stand against President Kagame in the 2017 election.
Heritage Times HT reports that she is not the first critic of the President to be barred from seeking the July election.
Earlier, a three-man panel of Justices on Tuesday ruled that another critic of Kagame, Bernard Ntaganda, 55, who is the founder of Social Party Imberakuri (PS-Imberakuri) will not participate in the polls over his refusal to pay court fees of almost Rwf106,000 involving his previous case against him.
“The High Court finds that Bernard Ntaganda did not abide by the laws that require individuals to request their conviction to be removed. This court rejects the appeal,” the court ruled.
Heritage Times HT recalls that President Kagame, 66, came to power when he stopped the 1994 genocide on July 4, 1994.
He first tiptoed in the shadows as a vice president defence minister, formally becoming president of a transitional government in 2000.
Kagame then organised Rwanda’s first ever presidential elections on August 25, 2003.
He was elected to a seven-year term with 95 percent of the vote.
Since then, he won elections in 2010 and 2017, each time with more than 90 percent of the vote – the last with 98.7 percent.
In 2015, Kagame presided over controversial constitutional changes which reduced a presidential term limit from seven to five from 2024.
It also allows him to run for two more terms and potentially stay in power until 2034.
