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Rwanda: Exiled FDU-Inkingi Politician Victoire Ingabire returns to Rwanda on January 15

By RNA Reporter
January 11, 2010

Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza will board a plane this week to Rwanda to prepare for the scheduled Presidential elections, but her critics are wondering why she will be coming alone leaving her top lieutenants in Europe.

Available information suggests that Dutch-based Mrs. Ingabire will board the flight from Amsterdam on January 15 headed for Kigali. However, her colleagues in the Unified Democratic Forces Inkingi (FDU-Inkingi) party have not recieved their visas from Rwanda.

Case in point is party Vice Chairman Eugène Ndahayo, who immigration officials have asked to verify his Rwandan nationality. In June, the party presented him to the Rwandan embassy in Brussels with his application. He is yet to get the passport but some others have.

According to Mr. Ndahayo, he is Rwandan, who lived and worked in Rwanda for several years before exiling himself. He was Director of Cabinet of the then Minister of Information Jean-Baptiste NKULIYINGOMA in the first RPF-led government put in place on July 19, 1994.

He produced a copy of the Presidential Order published by the Official Gazette of the Republic of Rwanda appointing him Director of Cabinet among other official papers.

He was the Executive Secretary of the now-disbanded “Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR)” that was part of the RPF-led coalition until his resignation and subsequent flight to France in 1995, where he has stayed since 1995 as a political refugee.

Some sections in the party have been proposing that the return to Kigali be organised for the whole group, with another section fronting the idea that those with the passports including Mrs. Ingabire immediately come onto the ground.

In Rwanda, the head of the Immigration department, Mr. Anaclet Kalibata dismissed all accusations against his office.

“Every Rwandan wherever they are has right to get a Rwandan passport. However, every applicant is assessed on an individual basis. We do not give passports to political parties and I do not want to discuss such controversies,” he told RNA in October.

Kalibata said that the “policy is clear”, adding the passports are not given to political parties but individuals.

“Ingabire applied for her passport around May but was told that she needed to provide more documents, which she did, and eventually got her passport around August,” he said.

In May last year, the FDU unanimously voted for Mrs. Ingabire to be the flag-bearer for the elections whose exact date had not been set. In November, the election commission announced the date as August 09, 2010. FDU-Inkingi is yet to register.

However, according to party colleagues, Mrs. Ingabire, 42, had already stopped working in 2008 apparently to devote more of her time to the party.

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posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:25 PM