‘I will not anoint someone to be my successor’ — Kagame
Incumbent Rwandan president Paul Kagame looks set to receive a new mandate when the East African country goes to the polls on Monday, after saying that he is not looking at “anointing” a possible successor.
Kagame, 66, who has been president of Rwanda since 2000, on Saturday addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters who braved the heat to gather in Kigali for his final rally ahead of polling.
Supporters of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) sang and danced for more than two hours under a scorching sun, patiently waiting for Kagame to address the rally.
Kagame spoke mostly in Kinyarwanda but switched to English at the end of his address, and told his cheering supporters: “You cannot fake excitement, you cannot fake unity. You cannot fake a turn-up like this one.”
At a press briefing immediately after the rally, attended by about 100 journalists including foreign media, he was repeatedly asked what would happen when he eventually departs office and if a process to find a successor would involve his input.
“I told the party ... that I’m not going to name anybody to lead you, you will be the ones to look for somebody that’s a recipe for disaster,” Kagame said.
Kagame has been credited with the small one-city country’s impressive advancement since the 1994 genocide, including having one of Africa’s fastestgrowing economies.
“I’m not going to anoint somebody, you will be the ones who will keep looking around and appreciating people ... I don’t want to leave a disaster for the people. If they choose a disaster, it would be a disaster they have chosen,” he said.
Rwanda’s constitution was amended in 2015 after a referendum which paved the way for the former military leader to contest the presidential polls and stay in power until 2034.
Kagame said he was not in favour of grooming a possible future leader and was more in favour of creating a viable platform and environment for any successor. “I don’t like this idea of grooming as it focuses on one person or another. I prefer doing it generally.”
Kagame said he had told his party since 2010 that it had to start looking for a successor, but whatever he had achieved had been achieved through working with Rwandans, as he was merely a leader.
“I am sure when I [am] not here, there would be another choice, a choice that can lead them better without ruling out the fact that things may not be as good as they have been,” he said.
Kagame entered the election without a strong opponent. However. independent candidate and former journalist Philippe Mpayimana, 54, on Friday held a rally attended by less than 50 people, half of them from the media, at an open football field in Kigali.
Mpayimana took questions from the journalists but did not sound like someone looking to cause an electoral upset.
He said voting for an alternative to Kagame “is another culture to cultivate but, an alternative is needed in Rwanda. It’s a matter of culture, we have been ruled by kingdoms since many hundreds of years and it was one king.”
Mpayimana said Rwandans were struggling “to differentiate between the republic and monarchy of ancient times.
“It is not very easy but our country is a democracy, they will understand it and accept the alternation of power as one of our values.”
Mpayimana and Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda are Kagame’s only opponents in the election.
In the 2017 election, Kagame won 98.6% of the vote, beating Mpayimana and Habineza by a landslide.
Kagame has won elections in 2003, 2010, and 2017, amassing in excess of 90% of the votes in all of the polls, and he now look set to begin a new five-year term.
He was commander of the RPF forces who are credited with ending the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.