For the first time, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has declared his intention to run for a fourth term in the next elections.
Kagame, who has dominated the nation with an iron fist for decades, said in an interview with the French-language weekly magazine Jeune Afrique that was posted online on Tuesday, “Yes, I am indeed a candidate.
“I appreciate the trust the people of Rwanda have shown in me. The 65-year-old was quoted as stating, “I will always serve them, for as long as I can.
The Rwandan government resolved in March to hold the country’s legislative and presidential elections on the same day in August of the following year.
Kagame had not previously been transparent about his ambitions, but in 2015, he presided over contentious constitutional changes that gave him the ability to continue serving in office until 2034.
Kagame, a former rebel leader, was elected president in April 2000 but has served as the nation’s de facto leader ever since the 1994 genocide ended.
In the 2003, 2010 and 2017 elections, he received more than 90% of the vote and was re-elected.
While Kagame’s government claims to rule in an environment of fear, limiting opposition and free expression, rights groups charge that Kagame’s Rwanda is one of the least stable nations in Africa.
- ‘Prisoners’ – Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of “Hotel Rwanda” and a vocal opponent of Kagame, was jailed for 25 years in 2021 on terrorism-related charges after being apprehended the year before when a plane he thought was headed for Burundi crashed in Kigali instead, a situation his family dubbed an abduction.
Rusesabagina, who was released from prison in March of this year and flew to the United States as a result of a presidential pardon, declared in a video message published in July that Rwandans were “prisoners in their own country.”
According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index, the nation came in at number 131 out of 180.
