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A power careless of its people

Poverty, misery, illness, worry, fear, the fear of disappearing, general under development are not due to a defect nor a fatality nor a curse of our people. The experience of the 70’s and 80’s, the glorious years of our prosperity, prove adequately how ingenious and hard working the Rwandan people are and how they could again stand up if peace and security could be guaranteed. Of course our country does not have the same resources as our neighbours, but its primary resource is the genius and hard work of its people. Can we pacify this people, reconcile it forever and protect it against the predators who fight for the “seats” and who always finish their combat in a blood bath?

Yes I can see only one solution: give back justice and power to its “owners”, that is the Rwandan people.

A false fight against poverty

The other solution rests also in the struggle which has to be led against poverty. The statistics will always show, and often in an exaggerated fashion, the progress achieved by the current regime. High rates of growth, often above 8%! These fantasy statistics are one thing and reality quite another. To combat poverty, we need to develop the rural environment. The construction of beautiful villas is in no way the best measure of our development. I would like to have in my country more stalls, small markets, more shops and small craft production units than villas and beautiful cars.

How can we pretend that we have indigenous development if the public debt, which was 0.8% of GDP in 1990, is today more than 1.6% (i.e. A doubling of the public debt in 10 years). Whilst the misery of the Rwandan population has got worse (see the world report of the UNDP on human development 2001), the vacuum caused by the war of 1990-94 and the dismantling of the state by the two belligerents (the FPR and the FAR) is not enough to justify this development. The waste of public funds for the war effort in the Congo and the corruption are in part responsible for the excessive growth of our country’s debt.

This evolution is even more worrying because no coherent program of economic regrowth has ever been established. Fraud, which is virtually recommended by the regime, economic crimes against the Congo, the abandoning of farms and state enterprises into the hands of foreigners (often without compensation unless for derisory prices), inflation, corruption, these are all signs which cannot be misunderstood. More than ever in the civil service the criteria of competence, efficiency and merit are replaced by a marked preference for political cronyism, synonym for opportunism and mediocrity which demotes, to the level of myth and pious hope, the cult of excellence so vaunted by the current Rwandan authority.

An incoherent “patriotic” policy

If the balance of politics of the preceding regime used to favour regionalism above all else whilst scandalously excluding the Tutsis from public office, the patriotic policy of the current FPR regime plunges the country into an unprecedented gulf of exclusion. We have simply returned to the colonial era and absolute monarchy. We are all victims of it: those in exile as much as those remaining at home who are reduced to silence in their own country.

In the name of transparency the new governors, making the most of a record transition period of nine years, have not stopped deluging the Rwandans and the international community with chatter and confused and incoherent reports which merely result in rendering opaque discriminatory practices and revealing to the public eye serious insufficiencies in the management of public affairs. We are Rwandan, but we do not all enjoy the same chances.

So what to do? A change of policy seems to be necessary. It cannot be otherwise. It makes itself obligatory.

In similar conditions the repeated calls to solidarity and national cohesion can have no mobilising effect, given the huge frustration of the numerous victims of exclusion and marginalisation. Rwandans from all levels of the administration wish to take part in the management of their country, but not at all costs and above all they do not want to be pawns, “yes men”, or instruments of power.

Confronted with all these difficulties it is time to move to political action, to enthuse the Rwandan people with a new hope. We must re-establish in full their legitimacy, their primacy and their sovereignty.