Don’t worry about Rwandan tenure elongation referendum –Envoy
Rwandan Ambassador to Nigeria, Stanislas Kamanzi, has risen up in defence of President Paul Kagame, saying he has no plans to emulate some of Africa’s sit-tight Presidents who continued to perpetuate their stay in power through their own will. He also cautioned cynics from viewing the recent referendum in the country which will allow Kagame
Rwandan Ambassador to Nigeria, Stanislas Kamanzi, has risen up in defence of President Paul Kagame, saying he has no plans to emulate some of Africa’s sit-tight Presidents who continued to perpetuate their stay in power through their own will.
He also cautioned cynics from viewing the recent referendum in the country which will allow Kagame the opportunity to seek another term in office when his tenure expires in 2017, with what is happening in Burundi and Zimbabwe, adding that there was no similarity between them.
Stanislas, who spoke at American University of Nigeria, AUN, Distinguished Diploma Lecture series, a platform launched since 2006 by the institution to deepen knowledge and understanding of the international community from the perspective of foreign diplomat, at the weekend, linked the tenure elongation being propounded in his country to the good policies and programmes of the Kagame administration.
The ambassador said it would be unfair to compare the developments in Burundi, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe where their leaders are at the centre of propagating their stay in office to what had happened in Rwanda. He urged the African community not to go into doom and gloom kind of thinking over the Rwandan tenure elongation referendum, stressing that Kagame was not here to stay like the other sit-tight leaders. “It is unfair to compare what happened in Burundi and Zimbabwe to Rwanda.
To compare what happened in these countries to Rwanda is like comparing Apples and oranges. Don’t worry he is not here to stay, so let’s not worry and go into this doom and gloom kind of thinking,” Kamanzi said. According to him the tenure elongation of Paul Kagame’s Presidency clearly obviates from the processes which have characterised the clamour for tenure elongation in other African countries. In the case of Kagame, he noted, unlike other African leaders who wanted to perpetuate themselves in office, Kagame never took any step to influence or lobby anybody to elongate his stay in power, adding that it was the people who had clamoured for him to continue.
He stressed that 98 per cent of voters in the referendum, who okayed the lifting of the term limit somehow reflected the four million letters written by individual citizens requesting the parliament to okay a referendum to amend the constitutional term limit. He also pointed out that the Rwanda tenure elongation happened as a result of the good policies taken by the Kagame regime, noting that it is not about the president.
