Rwanda has never, since its independence from Belgium, experienced peaceful transfer of power from one ‘elected’ president to another. Each president that grabs power declares himself the only Rwandan capable of ruling. Each regime comes in power because they want to remove the dictator from power and hand the mantle of state power to ‘the people.’ Change from one regime to another has always been bloody in Rwanda.
In 1994 General Paul Kagame defeated General Habyarimana after a bloody four year civil war. General Habyarimana had made himself ‘the father of the nation’ and an irreplaceable president of Rwanda. General Kagame and his RPF/A waged the 1990-1994 war because General Habyarimana had closed all the possible venues for peaceful transfer of power.
General Kagame and his RPF/A sounded determined to hand power over to ‘the people’ after the war. Over a million Rwandans perished during the war.
General Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party: More of the same
After the war and massacres that brought Gen Kagame and his RPF/A into power, Gen Kagame’s diagnosis of Rwanda’s problem was ‘bad political leadership and clinging on to power.’
To address this problem, Gen Kagame and his RPF/A wrote the 2003 Rwanda Constitution. Article 101 of the 2003 Constitution provides, inter alia , ‘no person shall be president for more than two terms’. Each term is 7 years under the 2003 Constitution of Rwanda.
This post was published at 21st Century Wire on OCTOBER 30, 2015.
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