RWANDESE UNITY

I introduce myself to my people and I try to share with them my ideal of unity amongst Rwandans. I invite them to support me so we can reconstruct our beautiful country. If elected I will undertake to restore a democratic regime in my country and re-establish a peaceful environment in the Great Lakes region. Also, based on my political expertise, I am well positioned to resolve the ethnic problems calmly and to tackle other general problems of our economy and national political life.

The civil and hegemonic wars, poverty, sickness, corruption, the absence of individual freedom, fear, the cult of personality and the restored oligarchic “akuzu” system, will all be confronted during my electoral campaign and, after my election, serious measures will be taken to eradicate them.

In this document I present myself as the candidate for a new start, the candidate for a change in mind set and for hope. To fight against unfair immunity from judicial punishment, to restore democracy in my country and to exert all my strength to ensure harmonious social and economic development in the strict respect of solid institutions which represent the Rwandan people: that is my objective.

Recently the Rwandan people have examined carefully their country’s socio-political, historic, economic and cultural situation. They have analysed the monarchies and republics which have followed one another. They examine still more carefully the situation for tomorrow’s Rwanda, especially since the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the many crimes against humanity, including genocide, committed against the Rwandan refugees and against the people of the DRC. The DRC which has also been despoiled of its riches following attempts by the current regime in Kigali to consolidate a hegemony in the region.

From all this thought comes acknowledgement of deception, uncertainty and mistrust of this warmongering regime. Faced with this situation the Rwandan people silently ask themselves questions that go unanswered. They seek leaders to guide them to better destinations and to give them the hope to live in lasting peace in their own country.

In the current conditions, the international community should accept the evidence, draw out the lessons of the recent tragedy and operate on the basis of a clear and fair choice between two alternatives: democracy or dictatorship.

Disempowered, the people believe that their claims deserve a solution with hope, which comes through democratic change and a new political orientation. Finally it is up to this people to act and to act wisely, not only in the interests of their country but also in the interests of its partners, together to find solutions adapted to the evolution of our politics, internally, regionally and globally.

This change is not easy whilst the current political climate shows only dark horizons over a free Rwanda, but it is necessary.

The often incoherent and contradictory discussions of those at present in charge of the Rwandan peoples’ destiny, aim to suppress their history. No references are permitted to act as signposts within our own country. In their eyes everything is ‘genocide’. All the republican leaders, except the current president Major General Paul Kagame, are unworthy and assassins. For them there is no history other than their own. This is obviously unacceptable. The discussions are often arrogant in respect of the collective memory of the Rwandan people and international opinion and try in vain to disguise the unbearable present and badly damaged future, undecided since the FPR came to power.

The liberation of Rwanda, so acclaimed by the ‘patriots’ of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, has only ever been a slogan which rings hollow when faced with reality. After this liberation, the Rwandans were massacred with impunity, died of hunger or fled the country. Amongst the exiles of these last years there are businessmen crushed by the intolerable burden of taxes and duties, who flee to countries such as Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola and even Madagascar to seek happiness. This is ‘capital flight’. It is a fight for the life which their own country can no longer offer them. Such a shame! The great hope in the spirits of the Tutsis of the diaspora and of the interior, and of the moderate, democrat Hutus, was replaced at the moment of victory by deception, doubt and today’s silent revolt.

The process of democratisation began in 1990. Negotiations following the war centred on the division of power between the Rwandan government and the FPR, the fundamental law which resulted and all the fundamentals for a durable peace have today been swept away with the, oh so touching, excuse of having stopped the genocide.

As a refugee and victim of this crime, I cannot comprehend how this can always be the justification for all the crises, the lack of faith, the incompetence and the other flagrant weaknesses attributable to the FPR.

The Rwandan people were deceived by the FPR who promised them a democracy but which quickly turned to dictatorship.

The tradition of democracy that is the foundation of the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic, is attacked from within by incomprehensible regulations of a Stalinist nature, and eaten away by the destructive virus of base political, material and partisan interests.

From all the evidence, the feeling which currently dominates the vast, silent Rwandan majority, ground down by terror and the fear of disappearance, is that the process of democratisation, begun in 1990 and accepted by the Arusha Peace agreement in August 1993, has been emptied of all its content to be replaced by a one party system, the FPR. The FPR is disguised under the ‘Forum of Parties’ and the current Kigali regime wants to make this constitutional to prevent any form of organisation of political expression outside this.