PAUL KAGAME, the president of Rwanda, thinks there is nothing odd about how he won re-election for a third presidential term last year with 98% of the vote. “It could have been 100%,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank in New York a few months later.
It is hard to tell how popular Mr Kagame really is. Serious candidates who tried to stand against him were barred from doing so—and then ruthlessly punished. One of them was Diane Rwigara, a young businesswoman who appeared in court this week with her mother, charged with “inciting insurrection or trouble among the population”. The government has also brought charges against her aunt and brother, who live abroad.
The prosecution says the charges against Ms Rwigara relate, in part, to comments she made at a press conference last year. “She intended to smear the country and its leadership with lies,” Faustin Nkusi, the prosecutor, told the court. “She said that people are dying of poverty in...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2IIi8hh
EmoticonEmoticon