By The Newsline Reporter
August 25, 2010
The recently held presidential election in Rwanda has been given a clean bill of health by different international observers, including the Commonwealth Observer Group. But one international observer brings us the story that was never told- a firsthand account of RPF’s systematic electoral frauds in Musanze District. It is against such fraud that Kagame is riding back to Village Urugwiro.
Field observation during Election Day
During the week before Election Day, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) informed all local (Rwandan) observers that they would have to vote in the cell (Akagari) where they registered as voter and would not be entitled to vote elsewhere in the country (unlike the military personnel or journalists on duty) as it had been announced previously. As a result, an important portion of local observers whose deployment had been planned (or who had been deployed as long-term observers) in the countryside made sure to be back to the capital Kigali the day before Election Day in order to vote in the Kigali area on August 9.
Considering the impact which a massive ‘desertion’ of local observers from the countryside would have on the rigour and credibility of the election monitoring, the last minute decision of the NEC is suspect. On August 9 (at least during the first hours of the day) mainly (the few) international observers accredited by the NEC could be present in remote/rural areas in order to monitor the electoral process.
I acted as an Election Observer for the non-governmental organization LDGL. On August 9, I moved around on a motorbike (with local rider) the whole day in Musanze District. In total, I visited 7 polling centers situated in 3 sectors of Musanze district: Shingiro, Kinigi and Gacaca. All polling centers visited were situated in rural areas.
Field visits’ assessment
In 4 of the 7 polling centres visited, I was the direct witness of numerous major electoral code violations such as ballot stuffing, secret of vote not guaranteed, vote in lieu of, and made-up results sheets. The election process in the three sectors I visited seems to have been largely infiltrated and influenced by local authorities loyal to the RPF party of president-candidate Paul Kagame. All violations which I observed during my visits are listed below. Transcribed below is also the vibrant testimony of a polling room coordinator who accepted to meet me on August 10. It can be deduced from all these elements that electoral fraud was systematic in most rural areas of the country on August 9.
At each place visited I felt a largely spread sentiment of embarrassment among the electoral agents and noticed an atmosphere of "too much perfection". All places were very calm; a group of women would be chanting or some young men playing football near the polling rooms. Observable voters' presence was little throughout the day. It seemed like all citizens had voted during the two first hours of the day.
From 8 am onwards, I did not observe anymore line of voters in front of polling rooms; during the time I spent visiting the last 6 polling centers of my programme (57 polling rooms = 57 umudugudu), i.e from 9:20 am to 3 pm, I recorded only six citizens voting.
In the same 6 polling centers, i.e from 9:20 am onwards, participation rates according to the marks in the voters' lists varied from 94,1% to 100%, with the exception of one polling room showing 84,1%. At Mugari cell (Shingiro sector) polling center, all 6 polling rooms presented a participation rate of 100% at 10:40 am. By the end of the day, Karwasa cell (Gacaca sector, 5 polling rooms, 2 pm) and Kabirizi cell (Gacaca sector, 7 polling rooms, 2:50 pm) polling centers showed a participation rate of 100%.
I did not notice any presence of concurrent political parties (PSD, PL, PPC) in the polling rooms nor in the polling centers' proximity throughout the day. Inversely, a representative of the RPF party was present in every single polling room visited. The absence of concurrent parties at the poll locations questions their unwillingness (inability, impeachment?) to monitor the electoral procedure. Had they been present in the locations listed below, could they have filed several appeals considering what followed.
Observations summary
a) Visit to polling center E.P. Gikoro (9 polling rooms) from 5:40 am to 8:30 am / Musanze district, Shingiro sector, Gakingo cell
Major violations of electoral code observed:
Ballot boxes stuffing. Prior to the beginning of the poll scheduled at 6 am, three polling rooms (probably more) had their ballot boxes stuffed with several hundreds of ballots stamped in favor of candidate Paul Kagame. All 9 rooms presented voters' lists with between 40 to 80% of the electors' names already marked as "having voted".
Ballot boxes unsealed. Logically, no disclosure of the empty ballot boxes was made to the public at the opening of the poll. As I left the polling center at 8:30 am, several rooms had their ballot boxes unsealed or sealed with only one tag.
Secret of vote not guaranteed. Several rooms had poorly located polling booths. In many cases, the RPF representative was sitting in a position where he could observe the voters' action. As I entered one room, the RPF representative was standing close to one voter. As some rooms only had one booth, 2-3 citizens would queue right behind a voter casting his vote.
Minor violations observed:
Indelible ink was missing in certain polling rooms; presence of five (not four) electoral agents in the polling room
b) Visit to polling center E.P. Kibwa (6 polling rooms) from 9:20 am to 9:40 am / Musanze district, Shingiro sector, Kibuguzo cell
Major violations of electoral code observed:
Vote in lieu of registered voters plus illegal voting. Three women had come to cast their vote but were first prevented to do so. Consultation of the voters' list showed that their names had already been marked as "having voted". One woman was finally invited to vote with a supplementary ballot.
Minor violation observed:
Indelible ink was missing in certain polling rooms.
c) Visit to polling center E.P. Nyamurimirwa (6 polling rooms) from 10:40 am to 11 am / Musanze district, Shingiro sector, Mugari cell
No apparent violation of electoral code observed. (At 10:40 am, 100% of the voters had already cast their vote according to the voters' list...)
d) Visit to polling center E.P. Bisate (17 polling rooms) from 11:20 am to 12 pm / Musanze district, Kinigi sector, Kaguhu + Bisoke cell
Minor violation of electoral code observed: indelible ink was missing in certain polling rooms.
e) Visit to polling center E.P. Kampanga (7 polling rooms) from 1 pm to 1:15 pm / Musanze district, Kinigi sector, Kampaga cell
No apparent violation of electoral code observed.
f) Visit to polling center E.P. Karwasa (5 polling rooms) from 2 pm to 2:20 pm / Musanze district, Gacaca sector, Karwasa cell
Major violations of electoral code observed:
Vote in lieu of registered voters + illegal voting. It had been planned that the rider/motorcyclist taking me around would cast his vote in his cell/umudugudu polling room between 2 and 3 pm. As we arrived in E.P. Karwasa, he was first prevented from voting. After some questioning and insistence, I could briefly notice that his name had already been marked on the voters' list. He was finally invited to vote with a supplementary ballot. A another citizen was also prevented from voting although he owned a voter card; the polling center's president and a dozen of local citizens argued that the man had a mental deficiency (it seemed that he indeed had a light mental deficiency).
Secret of vote not guaranteed. When casting his vote, the motorcyclist was accompanied inside the polling booth by an electoral agent.
Access to information denied to election observer. The polling center's president refused categorically to let me access the voters' lists.
Confiscation of personal legal documents. The polling center's president confiscated the voter card of the citizen with alleged mental deficiency, hid it and then declared that he did not possess it.
g) Visit to polling center E.P. Rungu (7 polling rooms) from 2:50 pm to 6 pm / Musanze district, Gacaca sector, Kabirizi cell
Major violation of electoral code observed:
Making-up of final electoral results. Just before the ballot boxes could be unsealed, as the polling staff was getting ready to proceed with the ballot counting, I requested to see the minutes sheet (PV) of the polling room opening (6 am).
After some hesitation, the polling room coordinator pulled out the polling room opening minutes’ sheet from an envelope and, accidentally, the minutes’ sheets of the results too. The latter was totally filled up with anticipated results showing a 100% vote in favor of candidate Paul Kagame.
The minutes’ sheet was signed by all electoral agents. A quick check proved that all 7 polling rooms of the polling center presented the same scenario. Embarrassment was general among the polling staff. All electoral agents proceeded in the counting of the ballots in a theatrical manner due to my presence. In the polling room I was observing, the total number of ballots counted corresponded exactly to the number of pro-Paul
Kagame votes transcribed on the minutes sheet (not one single alternative or invalid vote). In all polling rooms candidate Paul Kagame scored a 100% vote.
Minor violation observed: in one polling room, two representative of the RPF party - one man, one woman - were present. The latter did not possess an official document issued by the NEC.
B. Testimony of a polling room coordinator, Musanze district
On August 10, 2010, I privately met a polling room coordinator active at one of the polling centers I had visited the day before in Musanze district. The day before I had interacted with him (as with many other polling staff) and had implicitly expressed my interest to understand what was really happening. On August 10, he accepted to meet me as an election observer in order to denounce the electoral frauds organized by the RPF party. He revealed the chronology of the events which had taken place around the Presidential Election, and gave his point of view on the matter. I naturally guaranteed him total anonymity, and I am calling him Gilbert for this purpose.
His story
"It is a real drama", Gilbert said and added that on Sunday August 8, all the electoral agents were summoned by the Sector coordinator to attend a preparation meeting.
“There, the sector coordinator requested us to be present at our respective polling centers at midnight prompt during the night from Sunday to Monday," and recollected how the electoral agents were treated.
"The sector coordinator insisted on timely presence and added that he did not want to see one single cast against the RPF during the election...", Gilbert said.
He further said that at about midnight between August 8 and 9 all electoral agents met at the polling center, with several representatives of the RPF and the chiefs of the umudugudu (villages) also present.
"The chiefs of the umudugudus were requested to bring back the voter cards of their umudugudus' inhabitants. So they woke up households during the night in order to gather a maximum of voter cards. They came back to the polling center at around 2 am," Gilbert said
Between 2 am and 5:30 am, he added, the electoral agents, RPF representatives and chiefs of the respective umudugudus ticked the voters' lists against the names of the voters they had collected the voter cards from, and systematically stamped the corresponding number of ballots.
"In our polling room they had collected around 120 voter cards (on a total of 350 registered voters) and they stamped as many ballots. The strategy used to make the finger prints appear different was to incline the thumb in various manners as the ballots were stamped," Gilbert explained.
Gilbert estimated that no more than 4-5 individuals stamped all ballots in the polling room where he was.
Also, according to Gilbert, several citizens had refused to give their voter cards away. "In their cases they showed up at the polling center from 6 am onwards. But they all were pressurized to vote in favor of the candidate Paul Kagame. The authorities had urged us to control each ballot cast. After the voter would drop his ballot in the box, we would open it in order to verify which candidate had been voted. If it was not candidate Paul Kagame, we would take the ballot out and replace it with a ‘new ballot’."
In Gilbert's polling room, between 15 to 20 citizens chose to vote for "the second candidate in order of appearance on the ballot, i.e. PL's candidate Prosper Higiro", Gilbert recalled. These ballots were systematically replaced by ballots in favor of candidate Paul Kagame, he said.
Subsequently, at the particular polling center which had 9 polling rooms, all returned a 100% score in favor of the candidate Paul Kagame at the end of the election day.
Gilbert revealed that, in this context of massive electoral fraud, the unexpected appearance of a foreign observer in the polling center and the observations he performed on the spot had a negative impact on the polling staff. All agents were very surprised and many panicked. One political activist of the sector, present at that time, suggested that "we stop the election" as it seemed that the observer was noticing several elements of massive fraud, said Gilbert. "We were shaky as you were approaching our polling room. We thought to ourselves: “The Muzungu will discover everything.” As you would enter our room, we would stop following the voters in the polling booth."
Confronted with my observation in E.P. Gikoro (Shingiro sector, Gakingo cell), Gilbert revealed that in the polling center where he was involved not all polling rooms decided to drop the illegal ballots stamped before the poll opening in the ballot box. Gilbert's polling room preferred to hide the stamped ballots in the pockets of an electoral agent's jacket. "The agent then gave his jacket to an accomplice citizen; the latter entered the room repeatedly during the morning in order to progressively drop all ballots in the box."
According to Gilbert, a majority of electoral agents were the victims of the actions and strategies discussed and decided by the political authorities at the sector level. "Before the closure of the poll, at around 2 pm, the sector's coordinator came to us repeating that all of this shall be kept secret." Even the police present at the polling site intervened. "After you left, police urged us not to talk to the Muzungu at any time anymore" , Gilbert informed.
Gilbert assumes that what happened in his polling center was not at all unique, that the majority of polling centers situated in rural areas had gone through a similar electoral fraud. "Actually, a majority of the population did want none of the four proposed candidates; therefore, a majority of citizens would have preferred not to vote had they had the choice to do so", Gilbert analyzed. According to him, the Presidential and Parliamentarian elections of 2003 and 2008 also involved major fraud.
In order to meet me on August 10, Gilbert traveled a long distance on a motorcycle. Gilbert informed me that he had taken a huge risk by giving such sensitive information to an outsider.
"I may lose my life doing this, but I wished to tell you what I have witnessed so that the world knows what happens in Rwanda. Here, there is no democracy. I request you to be the best possible transmitter of what I confided to you," he implored me.
During our conversation, Gilbert spontaneously indicated that he had voted with his conscience for the RPF party during the Parliamentarian election of 2008. This element, as well as my perception of Gilbert's deep genuineness, shall exonerate him from any partisan (anti-RPF) opportunism. "To vote for the party in power is one thing, the other is the discreet and individual nature of a democratic vote. That is what we lack in Rwanda", Gilbert concluded.
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