Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, on Sept. 20, 2023.Caitlin Ochs/Reuters
A Rwandan court has barred a high-profile opposition leader from the July presidential election, clearing the way for another easy victory by President Paul Kagame as he enters his fourth decade of rule.
The High Court ruled that Victoire Ingabire is ineligible to run in the election because of an earlier conviction for “divisionism” for questioning the lack of justice for Hutu victims of the Rwandan genocide.
Mr. Kagame has dominated Rwanda as a military leader and politician since 1994 when his rebel army marched into the capital, Kigali, during the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people died, mostly ethnic Tutsis killed by Hutu militants.
His supporters amended the constitution in 2015 to make him eligible for three further terms, which could allow him to rule until 2034. That would give him a full four decades in power, first as military chief and de-facto leader, and since 2000 as president.
In every presidential election he has entered, Mr. Kagame has won landslides of 93 per cent or more – often after prominent opposition leaders were barred from running against him.
After the court ruling earlier this week, the only remaining opposition candidate in the election race is Frank Habineza, Leader of the Democratic Green Party, who gained less than 0.5 per cent of the vote in the last election in 2017.
Ms. Ingabire, in a statement this week, said the court ruling was “a stark reminder of the barriers to political participation and the urgent need for reform in our country’s governance.” The ruling showed the lack of independence in Rwanda’s judiciary and “the suppression of alternative voices” in the country, she said.
Despite the court’s decision, she said she remains unshaken and determined to keep fighting for “a more just and democratic society.”
Under Rwandan law, the 55-year-old politician cannot appeal the court ruling for two years.
Ms. Ingabire had tried to run against Mr. Kagame in the 2010 election, but was arrested and barred from running. She served eight years in prison until she was pardoned in 2018.
Human rights groups said the charges against her were politically motivated. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, established by the African Union, ruled in 2017 that Rwanda had violated Ms. Ingabire’s right to freedom of expression. It also found that her legal rights had been violated when a witness was threatened and intimidated by prison officials.
David Himbara, a former aide to Mr. Kagame who later became a prominent critic of the Rwandan President, said the court ruling on Wednesday has guaranteed that Mr. Kagame will win the July election. In a social media post, the Canadian-based dissident said the election is being “manufactured” to legitimize Mr. Kagame’s rule.
Many critics of the 66-year-old president, including several supporters of Ms. Ingabire, have been killed, imprisoned or forced to flee the country.
At a party congress last weekend, Mr. Kagame’s re-election bid was endorsed by 99.1 per cent of delegates of his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party. He told the party’s officials that he accepted “the burden you have given me.”
According to the state-controlled New Times newspaper, Mr. Kagame told the delegates: “The burden of responsibility to lead our country can be equated to a shock absorber against the challenges we face daily.”
His expected re-election will also clear the way for him to continue pursuing his controversial military strategy in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the M23 rebel group has seized a huge swath of territory and massacred hundreds of civilians.
Mr. Kagame has denied that Rwanda controls M23, but United Nations reports have cited satellite photos and eyewitness testimony that document how the militia group is supported by Rwandan weaponry, military equipment and troops.
Last week, M23 captured another Congolese town, Nyanzale, in an attack that killed at least 15 people and forced about 100,000 people to flee their homes. In total, about 2.6 million people in the province of North Kivu have been displaced by fighting in the past two years, largely because of M23 advances.
Western governments, including the United States, have complained that Rwanda has sent sophisticated surface-to-air missile launchers into eastern Congo, threatening the UN’s aircraft in the region.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the recent fighting has caused an upsurge in civilian casualties and threatens to overwhelm the limited capacity of struggling health centres in eastern Congo.
“Hundreds of badly injured civilians, many of them women and children, have been streaming into health care facilities in North Kivu – 40 per cent of them victims of shelling or other heavy weapons used in densely populated urban areas,” said ICRC director-general Robert Mardini in a statement last week during a visit to the region.
“The use of explosive weapons in populated areas, including near displaced camps, is very likely to have indiscriminate effects,” he said.