Rwanda: Diane Rwigara heads to the presidential elections

“A new chapter for Rwanda begins now together, join me as I run for president“, she wrote on X, with the hashtag #Twagiye (“Go” in Kinyarwanda).

At 42, Diane Rwigara is the fourth candidate declared for this election, with Paul Kagame, the country’s strongman since the end of the genocide in 1994 and president since 2000, Franco Habinez, deputy and leader of the Green Democratic Party, the opposition formation authorized by the government, and Philippe Mpayima, an independent candidate.

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Oppositionist Victoire Ingabire, who has announced her intention to run, will not be able to do so after a court in March rejected her request to restore her civil rights, which were stripped of her after her 2013 conviction, particularly for “minimizing the 1994 genocide”.

Victoire Ingabire, during her trial in September 2011. She was released with 2,100 other prisoners, without explanation, in September 2018.

© AP Photo/Shant Fabricatoria

According to the official election calendar, candidates for the July 15 presidential and legislative elections must submit their applications from May 17 to May 30. The final list of candidates will be published on June 14.

Diane Rwigara wanted to run for president in August 2017, but her candidacy was rejected by the electoral commission due to alleged forgeries. The decision was criticized by Western governments and human rights groups.

Arrested and tried for falsifying documents, but also, with her mother and sister, for “incitement to insurrection”was acquitted of these charges in 2018, “unfounded” according to the court.

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Diane Rwigara is the daughter of Assinapola Rwigara, an important Rwandan businessman who made his fortune in industry and real estate. In the 1990s, he largely financed Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) before he overthrew the Hutu extremists in July 1994, ending the genocide.

Diane Rwigara distanced herself from the RPF following the death of her father in February 2015 in a road accident, according to police. She disputed this version and condemned it “assassination”.

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Credited with Rwanda’s spectacular development, bloodless after the genocide, Paul Kagame is regularly accused of violating freedom of expression and repressing any opposition.

Elected president by parliament in April 2000, he received more than 90% of the vote in presidential elections held since then by universal suffrage in 2003, 2010 and 2017.