Rwanda will hold presidential elections next July 2024. 

All indications are that RPF-Inkotanyi’s candidate Paul Kagame, who has been in power since 1994, will be elected with an overwhelming majority. 

Elections are not even necessary in this country, as Paul Kagame is the only one running since he came to power. There is always some other candidate on the ballot, selected by the regime to convey a sense of pluralistic democracy, but who is a straw man, as evidenced by the fact that he usually campaigns for his opponent Kagame, not for himself.

Victoire Ingabire is the main opponent of the regime. She has enormous support both inside and outside Rwanda's borders but has never managed to actually run for office.

She was arrested in 2010, accused of "genocide ideology" (a very convenient accusation hurled against anyone who criticizes the regime). She spent 8 years in prison after a political trial plagued with irregularities. In 2017, the African Union's Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AFCHPR) declared this trial as political and ordered the Rwandan government to compensate the opponent for the material and moral damages inflicted on her and her family. Not only has the government failed to pay Ingabire any compensation, but on March 13, it also denied her the right to register as a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for July because of her "criminal record", i.e. because of the insane trial that was deemed political by the African court and many other serious bodies.

This woman was released from prison in 2018, having served 8 of the 15 years she was sentenced to, not because of the African Court and others' condemnations but because of "Presidential Mercy"... of course, because of Paul Kagame's big heart, right?

Well, it so happens that President Kagame has not shown much mercy throughout his life. According to countless testimonies, he is a cruel, bloodthirsty, and ruthless man. For some experts, he is "the biggest criminal in office today." Since he eliminated his rivals in the 1990s to lead what was then a rebel group called RPF, he has been known even among his own subordinates as the "Butcher of Kigali" for his taste for torture and the suffering of others. According to many reports and investigations, including court cases, he is primarily responsible for the violent deaths of some 10 million people in the Central African region over the past 30 years, not only the Rwandan genocide. 

Rwanda's big problem is not elections

A Senegalese friend explained to me years ago that when a candidate becomes able to stand for election in today's Africa, you can already assume that he/she is not going to defend the interest of the people, but the interests of predatory foreign companies and powers. If a politician wanted to defend the interest of the people, he/she could not even run, much less win.

The facts and history prove him right. For now, and this has been the case since independence, the elections have never brought significant changes to the African peoples. It seems that going to vote once every four years does not put sovereignty in the hands of the people. They don't even have options among the quadrennial ballots for a candidate who can be sovereign, who can do something other than comply with external directives.

So it is not surprising that Madame Ingabire cannot run for presidency. If it weren't for this ridiculous excuse, it would be for another similar one. She's too honest.

Rwanda's big problem is not that it cannot have an honest person among its candidates, as happens to most countries in the world, Rwanda's big problem is that it has the butcher of Kigali in its government, and it is going to continue like this after the “elections.” Rwanda has in its government the main instigator and the one responsible for the 1994 genocide. It has in its government a man and a group who slaughter innocent people every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo and plunder its resources. The enormous problem in Rwanda is that very expensive international Public Relations companies have built an image of modern democrats for these criminals who have been massacring and terrorizing their people and the peoples of neighboring countries for 30 years. On top of that, victims have to endure Western leaders adulating these evil people. That is the great problem of Rwanda, and of Congo, and of all the good people of that region who suffer their ineffable crimes and this cruel invisibility.