Bloomberg
By Felly Kimenyi
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has ruled the East African nation since more than 800,000 people were killed in a genocide in 1994, said he expects his party to win presidential elections in August.
Kagame, 52, didn’t say whether he would be a candidate in the vote. The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front will probably win the election because of its role in the political and economic development of the country, Kagame told reporters today in the capital, Kigali.
“I am certainly confident that my party will participate and win the presidential election,” he said. “I am basing this on the centrality of the RPF in what this country has achieved”.
Kagame won 95 percent of the vote in elections in 2003. At the time, European Union observers expressed concern that optimal conditions for a free and fair “were probably not entirely met.” Rwanda’s economy has grown at an average rate of more than 6.5 percent since 2003, according to International Monetary Fund data.
The ruling party will select its candidate at a national congress this weekend. The Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, which backed Kagame in the previous vote, said earlier this month they plan to field their own candidates.
The 2003 election was the first since 1994, when more than a 10th of Rwanda’s population died in a 100-day slaughter of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by ethnic Hutu militias.
--Editors: Paul Richardson, Karl Maier
Business Week
