On
Saturday, August 23, President Paul Kagame was holding his final
campaign rallies, ahead of voting Monday.
Kagame
- the favorite in Monday's poll, seen as a key step to healing some of
the rifts caused by the infamous genocide - was to continue on the
campaign trail until the last minute.
Rwandan
electoral rules give candidates until early Sunday - 24 hours before
polling booths open - to canvass for votes.
Despite
that, Kagame's main challenger, former Prime Minister Faustin
Twagiramungu has already wrapped up his campaigning and was at home
Saturday, a spokesman said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Kagame
was later expected to hold a rally in Kigali's working-class Nyamirambo
district, after an earlier appearance in Kabuga, on the city's
outskirts.
He
was to wind up his campaign with a rally in the Rwandan capital's
largest stadium, his officials said.
But
Twagiramungu, a former moderate Hutu prime minister, was to spend the
day at home, where he would receive visitors, spokesman Ismael Mbonigaba
said.
The
opposition frontrunner told AFP Friday that he would cut short his
presidential campaign by 48 hours, saying authorities had failed to
authorize meetings where he wanted.
A
former prime minister who returned to Rwanda after an eight-year
exile in June, Twagiramungu held his last campaign meetings in the
northwest province of Gisenyi.
Since
the campaign started on August 1, Twagiramungu has complained that the
authorities and the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) were trying to
sabotage his campaign and did not allow him to use stadiums for
meetings.
Authorities
countered that the former prime minister was badly organized.
The
first democratic Presidential election since Rwanda gained
independence from Belgium in 1962, Monday's poll will also be a defining
political event since the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Legacy
Of Genocide
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Victims
of the genocide still wait for justic
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Since
the ethnic massacres of 1994, the tiny country has had to temper justice
with the need for reconciliation.
However,
the electoral campaign for the election has shown that the country has
not quite gotten over its troubled past.
Kagame's
camp has regularly accused its rivals of ethnic "divisionism",
a serious accusation in Rwanda.
According
to several human rights organizations, the accusation is the easiest way
to discredit the entire Rwandan opposition.
The
RPF, the former Tutsi rebel group that has been in power since 1994, has
insisted on the necessity for "national unity" and has
officially abolished all reference to ethnicity.
But
for the government's critics, the emphasis on ethnic neutrality is only
a scapegoat for RPF's hold on to political, economic and military power.
"The
regime started with great openness in 1994, with a Hutu prime minister
and a majority of Hutu ministers. Then came a succession of
defections," said a Western diplomat very critical of Kagame's
regime, according to AFP.
"The
circle of people in power then progressively shrunk and hardened,"
he added.
Twagiramungu
says that reconciliation in Rwanda will not be complete without shedding
light and justice on all the crimes.
He
has supported the setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
modeled on the South African one.
"The
intention is good but utopian", said a Western observer of Rwandan
politics. "If we start talking about crimes committed by the RPF,
we will immediately be accused of divisionism, of revisionism", he
added.
Kigali
has strained relations with the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR), the United Nations court trying ringleaders of the
genocide.
ICTR's
prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, hopes to investigate crimes committed by
the RPF in 1994.
Rwanda
authorities recently put in place a grassroots justice system known
as Gacaca to try people suspected of committing genocide, but the trials
are yet to get underway and more than 85,000 suspects have for years
languished in crowded jails.
"Participation
and democratization are essential for overcoming the hierarchical
structures and culture of obedience so prevalent in and detrimental to
Rwanda's past," wrote the United Nations Development Program in a
previous report on Rwanda.
"In
the shorter term, however, these issues must be approached with great
sensitivity and care," it added.
