Rwanda's Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.wants the international community, which provides half of the country's budget, to reject President Paul Kagame's re-election. Photo/File
By AFP
A Rwandan opposition leader called Thursday on the international community, which provides half of the country's budget, to reject President Paul Kagame's re-election.
Victoire Ingabire, who heads the United Democratic Forces (UDF), had announced her intention to run in the August 9 poll but saw her party's registration rejected.
"We urge the international community, the bilateral partners and donors to reject the sham electoral process and its outcome and to put pressure on the Rwandan government to organise new free, fair and transparent polls," she said in a statement.
Kagame, who has ruled the small country since his Rwandan Patriotic Front stopped the 1994 genocide against his Tutsi minority, won a new seven-year term with 93 percent of the vote, according to the electoral commission.
"Endorsing the results of this masquerade would be to reward violence as a means to access and maintain power in Rwanda... We consider the present administration as lacking political legitimacy," said Ingabire, who faces court charges of denying the 1994 genocide which left some 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, dead in a space of three months.
Three parties recently set up to challenge Kagame's rule were unable to contest the election.
Frank Habineza, the leader of the unregistered Democratic Green Party -- whose deputy was found last month with his head almost hacked off -- also slammed the Rwandan election but stopped short of demanding a re-run.
"The election was conducted in such a way that many Rwandans were covered in a big blanket of fear. The absence of the real opposition remains a fundamental concern that the government of Rwanda should not attempt to ignore," Habineza said.
"Now that the presidential elections are over, we need to have sustainable peace and sustainable development; we need to solve all these pending problems in order to properly move forward," he said in a statement.
Foreign observers noted no major irregularities during polling but said the election was marked by a lack of ""critical opposition voices".
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