The incumbent Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame has won over 99% of all the votes casted in the country’s just concluded Presidential election.
Kagame, candidate of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) casts his ballot at the SOS Kinyinya polling station in the capital Kigali, with reports saying he won nearly 95% of the all the votes casted in the station.
An AFP news agency reports that Kagame’s opponents Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR) and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana were collectively getting under one percent of the vote in provisional results.
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The result mirrored the outcome in 2017, when Kagame took nearly 99% of the vote.
Report say final results are expected by 27 July, although they could be announced sooner.
The 66-year-old Kagame, who has held power since the end of the country’s genocide in 1994, was running virtually unopposed.
Two of his stronger critics were blocked from running for high office.
30 Years of Reconstruction
This election was really “about how far Rwanda has come since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi,” Phil Clark, a professor of international politics at SOAS University of London, told RFI English’s podcast ‘Spotlight on Africa’.
“If you look at the way that Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the ruling party, have been campaigning for this election, it’s very much been on their record in helping to rebuild the country after the genocide,” RFI report.
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During the campaign, the party talked about the country’s economic growth and development, the peace and stability that Rwanda has experienced since the genocide as well as issues of of reconciliation and social cohesion.
“They’re seeing it very much as an election on Kagame’s record in terms of rebuilding the country after the genocide,” Clark said. “That’s a message that’s been pushed by the ruling party.”