Rwanda lifts limit to president’s terms

KIGALI, Rwanda — Rwandans have voted overwhelmingly to lift constitutional restrictions to allow President Paul Kagame to run for more terms in office, the head of Rwanda’s electoral commission said as he released provisional results Saturday.

More than 98 percent of voters in the country’s 30 districts voted to lift term limits for Kagame, Mbanda Kalisa said.

“The final results will be released Monday, but this will not change much,” Kalisa told journalists in Kigali. He said Rwandans who voted to maintain term limits were 1.7 percent. More than 6 million registered voters participated in the exercise, representing a voter turnout of 98.28 percent, he said. “[The] voting process was peaceful,” Kalisa said.

The provisional results surpass predictions by pollsters that 92 percent of Rwandans would support amending the constitution to remove the term limits. Rwanda’s political opposition criticized the referendum as undemocratic, and the U.S., a key Rwandan ally, has opposed Kagame’s bid to stay in power.

Kagame became president in 2000 after being Rwanda’s de facto leader since the end of the country’s genocide in 1994. He is credited with stabilizing the country and promoting economic growth after the mass killings, but critics say he is an authoritarian ruler who does not tolerate opposition.