Rwandans vote in referendum on third term for Paul Kagame

PRELIMINARY results will be announced about 8:30 p.m. Friday, after Rwandans voted December 18 in a referendum over an amendment to the East African nation’s constitution that would allow President Paul Kagame to extend his rule for as many as three terms if he chooses to, National Electoral Commission official Charles Munyaneza has said.

Some 40,000 Rwandans overseas were eligible to vote on Thursday, but the main polls with some 6.4 million registered to vote are on Friday.

The president was accompanied by the First Lady Jeannette Kagame and their daughter Ange Kagame, at Rugunga polling station, about a mile from their home.

“Apart from what we have seen in the media, we have not seen the physical copy of what we have voted on”, said a Rwandan student who voted in Kampala and did not want to give his name.

But the amendment would make an exception for Kagame, allowing him to run for a third seven-year term and two more five-year terms after that.

The pro-government The New Times newspaper, based in the capital, Kigali, said in an editorial Thursday that it expects the referendum result will be in favour of the changes. The Chamber of Deputies, Rwanda’s lower house, and the Senate, Rwanda’s upper house, have approved the proposals and the referendum is the final step.

The issue of long-serving rulers clinging to power has caused turmoil in Africa, where some leaders have been at the helm for decades.

Kagame has run Rwanda since his ethnic Tutsi rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), ended a 1994 genocide by extremists from the Hutu majority, when an estimated 800,000 people were massacred, the vast majority of them Tutsis.

Kagame has been in power since 2000 and is expected to serve his current term of seven years.

He declined to say whether he plans to run again if the changes to the constitution are passed.

The proposed changes have been criticised by the United States and the European Union, as well as by the country’s tiny opposition Green Party.

“Everything started on time and everything is going well”, Munyaneza said.

“Elections in Rwanda have never been transparent, so even if I could go, my “no” vote would not be counted”, said one woman who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions.

The unrelenting journalists inquired, if he was be run again and what he will offer Rwandans if voted?

Carina Tertsakian from Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that after “years of government intimidation… open expressions of dissent are rare”, and that approval of the referendum was expected.