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Rwanda goes to first elections since 1994 genocide
Kigali, Aug 24: Rwanda will tomorrow take a major step towards democracy and healing the wounds of its genocide nearly a decade ago, with the first multi-party elections since it won independence more than 40 years ago.
Kigali, Aug 24: Rwanda will tomorrow take a major step towards democracy and healing the wounds of its genocide nearly a decade ago, with the first multi-party elections since it won independence more than 40 years ago.
The landmark vote is expected to see President Paul
Kagame re-elected ahead of his main challenger Faustin
Twagiramungu, a Hutu and former Prime Minister, after a
campaign marked by allegations of wrongdoing and exploiting
ethnic divisions.
The charge is not a light one in a country where only nine years ago an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed -- many of them hacked to death -- in an orchestrated campaign of ethnic extermination.
While opposition figures have been taken in for questioning or banned from politics during the run up to voting, Twagiramungu, who in June returned to Rwanda after an eight-year exile, claimed that his campaign had been sabotaged.
But the election campaign has also allowed Rwandans to express criticism that no one previously dared to voice in the public arena.
Twagiramungu, for one, has been unsparing in his criticism of Kagame's Rwandan patriotic front. "What we're seeing more and more is a dictatorship being put in place," Twagiramungu said as he presented his candidature in July.
At his first public rally earlier this month, he pressed his point in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, accusing the ruling party of "holding 90 percent of the country's administrative posts".
Bureau Report
The charge is not a light one in a country where only nine years ago an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed -- many of them hacked to death -- in an orchestrated campaign of ethnic extermination.
While opposition figures have been taken in for questioning or banned from politics during the run up to voting, Twagiramungu, who in June returned to Rwanda after an eight-year exile, claimed that his campaign had been sabotaged.
But the election campaign has also allowed Rwandans to express criticism that no one previously dared to voice in the public arena.
Twagiramungu, for one, has been unsparing in his criticism of Kagame's Rwandan patriotic front. "What we're seeing more and more is a dictatorship being put in place," Twagiramungu said as he presented his candidature in July.
At his first public rally earlier this month, he pressed his point in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, accusing the ruling party of "holding 90 percent of the country's administrative posts".
Bureau Report