Politics

Rwanda sets date for next presidential elections

Published

5 months ago

December 12, 2023

East African country, Rwanda, has set July 2024 as the date for its next presidential elections, with incumbent Paul Kagame seeking to extend his roughly three decades of control of the country.

According to a presidential order published in the official gazette, nationwide elections for the lower house of parliament’s 53 deputies and the president will occur on July 15, with elections for the remaining 27 deputies scheduled for July 16.

Earlier this year, the president was re-elected to a five-year term as chair of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party. Human rights organisations have accused him of suppressing political opposition and silencing independent media, for which he has come under increasing pressure.

Ideal Democratic Party, Democratic Union of the Rwandan People, Prosperity and Solidarity Party, and Rwandan Socialist Party were among the groups that have declared support for Kagame’s re-election at the 2024 polls.

Political activist, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, declared that her United Democratic Forces party would challenge Kagame if registered in time. At the same time, Frank Habineza, the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda’s 2017 presidential candidate, has also stated that he will run again in 2024.

Rwanda held its last presidential elections on August 4, 2017. Paul Kagame, the current president of Rwanda, received 98.79% of the vote to win a third seven-year term in office.

A 2015 referendum authorised constitutional amendments that reduced the length of presidential terms from seven to five years and permitted incumbent President Paul Kagame to seek a third term in office in 2017. However, the latter change would not take effect until 2024.

The United States criticised the constitutional amendment in 2015, arguing that Kagame ought to resign at the end of his term to make room for a new generation of leaders.

Since the end of the 1994 genocide, which is said to have killed 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, Kagame has received praise from all around the world for overseeing economic expansion and peace.

As a result, some observers have used Kagame as a model for a hypothetical “benevolent dictator” argued to be necessary for the continent’s development.

Related Topics:Featured Paul Kagame Rwanda

Click to comment

Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

11 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.