Rwanda: A strong opposition is not my responsibility, says Kagame

By RNA Reporters
May 29, 2010

Kigali: For whoever is blaming President Kagame that the country does not have a strong opposition and why there is no democracy as seen from the outside, he says all these are "niceties" that are “contextual", RNA reports. He believes that is not what Rwandans need at the moment.

"Democracy has two sides: substance and form," he tells a British daily The Independent and explains. "Sometimes they are packaged together and you must swallow it as a medicine. We share the substance, meaning the definition, but how that is expressed is contextual."

"Democracy and human rights are niceties and are all important, but tell me, if somebody is wondering if they have anything to eat, they are not listening," he continues. "It's a fact that when somebody has food, when you bring another message, then they listen."

Critics accuse President Kagame of autocracy marked with preventing all forms of opposition. His detractors say the newspapers that have been closed and senior military generals sacked and others exiled, show a country is crisis.

These complaints are dismissed by the President in the interview. He "had nothing to do with" the recent banning of two independent newspapers; the generals dismissed in a military shake-up were guilty of corruption; and he accuses presidential rival Victoire Ingabire, who heads the opposition party United Democratic Forces, of using ethnicity to garner support.

Other opposition candidates, like the Democratic Green Party's Frank Habineza, can register their parties and stand as long as they "abide by the rules". He added: "A strong opposition is not my responsibility."

"Democracy is good music but you need somebody with ears to listen to that music," he says, in a separate interview with another British daily The Guardian.

"It doesn't matter how much you talk about democracy or human rights. Tell me about a family who spend the whole night looking at each other and wondering whether they will have something to eat. Are they thinking about anything else? They are just not listening."

We can all agree on the substance of democracy, he says, but the form it takes will be different even between European countries, the US and Japan.

"Your model of democracy, why should it be suitable for me?" he tells The Guardian.

President Kagame's view is that the Media High Council had to act against UMUVUGIZI and UMUSESO tabloids, which were libellous, irresponsible and inciting ethnic violence, and his government had to move against the generals, one of whom was accused of corruption and the other of immorality. Ingabire, he claims, has links to FDLR rebels. The timing of events was coincidental; his government could not delay taking action just because the presidential election was imminent.

"The west has democracy because it has institutions that hold people accountable. What has killed Rwanda and Africa is that people are not held accountable," he says. "So the question is, how do you want us to live? By allowing ministers or generals or mayors to run the show without accountability? Is that the form of democracy you want for us? We are saying no."

Ingabire Victoire contests all the allegations against her in interviews that are published in the same articles.

She admits to The Guardian that she went to Kinshasa twice, but not at the times alleged by the government. "They say I was in Kinshasa and met members of the FDLR in March and September 2008. I was not there in March but in February, not in September but October. I can prove it with my passport."

She went to ask the Congolese government for support for her political party, she says, just as she has visited many countries looking for backing. Ms Ingabire also dismissed the hearings of the traditional gacaca courts.

For Louise Mushikiwabo, the Foreign Affairs Minister and Government spokesperson, Ms Ingabire's challenge is "very deliberate, controversial ethnic politics, this woman really has a genocidal ideology".

Ingabire threw down the gauntlet on the day of her arrival, maintains Mushikiwabo to The Guardian.

The firry opposition politician went straight to the Genocide memorial center in Kigali on arrival on January 16 from Europe, looked around and questioned why it did not commemorate the deaths of any Hutus who died in the violence.

"That in Rwanda is revisionism," Mushikiwabo says. "We know that there were Hutus killed in the context of the genocide, but they weren't targeted. The more you blur the lines, the more you think it was a free-for-all. To us it is so clear cut. The dynamics are not understood abroad. It is maybe because things look too normal in this country. But when you allow people to go out into the villages and start that sort of rhetoric, you are really walking into trouble."

Back to President Kagame, under fierce attack from the outside for suppressing dissent and subverting the democratic process ahead of the presidential elections in August. But he tells The Guardian that criticism from outside is unfair and ill-informed.

"Why should the outside world judge Rwanda, judge Kagame, based on the views of two or three people or papers and not based on the views of Rwandans? If you ask people how they feel about government and the leadership, they give an entirely different view from what outsiders think," he says.

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