RWANDA: Cheerleaders want Kagame third term

Rwandan president Paul Kagame .  

In Summary

Constitutional change. The officials want the deletion of term limits after the Rwandan leaders’ term expires in 2017.

Cheerleaders in Rwanda have dropped their gloves and are now urging President Paul Kagame to run for a third term in office.

 

Among them is Rwanda’s Internal Security Minister Sheikh Fazil Musa Harerimana, who is now calling for the deletion of presidential term limits to allow Mr Kagame run for office after his current and last constitutional term expires in 2017.

In an interview published by The Chronicles, Mr Harerimana, the leader of the opposition Idealist Democratic Party (PDI) but working under Mr Kagame, states that a third term for Mr Kagame “would be very good for Rwanda.”

“The constitution should be amended so that people can decide. If Kagame stood again, we would vote for him ,” Mr Harerimana said.

Not interested
In power since April 2000, Mr Kagame was re-elected for a seven-year second term in office in August 2010 and has since publicly stated that he has no intention of clinging onto power.

“Personally I don’t want to be involved in or changing the constitution so that I stay in power and particularly changing the constitution for that purpose. I would hate it,” Mr Kagame said, shortly after his re-election last year.

According to Article 101 of the 2003 Rwandan Constitution, “The President of the Republic is elected for a term of seven years renewable only once.”

In an interview with this newspaper yesterday, Prof. Shyka Anastase, the executive director of the Governance Advisory Council, a national body that promotes and monitors good governance in Rwanda, described Mr Harerimana’s comments as a “joke”.

“I think he was probably trying to be funny. He was just saying out what was in his mind but nobody in Rwanda is actually interested in following him,” he said.

“President Kagame has stated clearly that he shouldn’t be counted in if anyone ever wants him for another term because he is not interested in that game.”

The Professor said “there is no such momentum” building up in the country to delete term limits, stating that had the comments come from inside the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front or “two years before the next election” due in 2017, or if Mr Kagame “says I’ll think about it”, then “people would be worried.”

Closer to home, Mr Harerimana’s comments bring back memories of the push that successfully led to the deletion of presidential term limits in Uganda in 2005, after Mr Museveni admitted that he had no choice but to go against a personal commitment in 2001 to serve a final term in office as a fulfilment of the wishes of the “people.”

Uganda is the only country in the East African region without presidential term limits.

Source: Daily Monitor, Posted  Friday, November 11  2011 at  00:00

Author: Emmanuel Gyezaho

egyezaho@ug.nationmedia.com