Rwanda votes MPs
Sep 29, 2003
KIGALI, Monday - Voting began Monday in Rwanda’s first legislative elections since the 1994 genocide, with the party of Paul Kagame, who was overwhelmingly elected president in August, expected to win a strong majority.
KIGALI, Monday - Voting began Monday in Rwanda’s first legislative elections since the 1994 genocide, with the party of Paul Kagame, who was overwhelmingly elected president in August, expected to win a strong majority.
The elections, to be held over four days, will put an end to the transition period that started after the genocide, in which up to a million people were slaughtered, most of them ethnic Tutsis, in a massacre orchestrated by the Hutu government at the time.
The polls are also the first multi-party legislative elections since independence from Belgium in 1962. But key opposition personalities and real opposition parties have been barred from contesting the elections.
On Monday, only three deputies — two youth representatives and one handicapped people’s representative — are being elected.
At the International Academy of Kigali’s Kicukiro district, the only polling station open in the capital on Monday, voting was smooth.
Around 100 voters from associations for handicapped people, many leaning on crutches, were choosing their representative from six candidates, while 165 members of the National Youth Council were choosing their two representatives from a total of seven hopefuls.
The candidates in Monday’s vote were running on individual tickets, and were not affiliated to any political party.
The elections, to be held over four days, will put an end to the transition period that started after the genocide, in which up to a million people were slaughtered, most of them ethnic Tutsis, in a massacre orchestrated by the Hutu government at the time.
The polls are also the first multi-party legislative elections since independence from Belgium in 1962. But key opposition personalities and real opposition parties have been barred from contesting the elections.
On Monday, only three deputies — two youth representatives and one handicapped people’s representative — are being elected.
At the International Academy of Kigali’s Kicukiro district, the only polling station open in the capital on Monday, voting was smooth.
Around 100 voters from associations for handicapped people, many leaning on crutches, were choosing their representative from six candidates, while 165 members of the National Youth Council were choosing their two representatives from a total of seven hopefuls.
The candidates in Monday’s vote were running on individual tickets, and were not affiliated to any political party.