By Nangayi Guyson, AfricaNews
KAMPALA, 10 August 2010: The results coming from different parts of Rwanda shows the country’s President Paul Kagame led on Tuesday in early results after a poll expected to return the post-genocide leader for a second term with a landslide, sparking giant celebrations in the capital.
Tens of thousands of Kagame supporters packed Kigali’s main football stadium for raucous festivities combining party songs with reggae after Monday’s presidential election, whose tense run up was marred by arrests and killings.
The announcement of partial results for Rwandans living overseas, who voted on Sunday, flashed on a giant screen, giving Kagame 96,7 per cent of the vote, sending the crowd in frenzy.
– It feels like victory! shouted one of the singers from the stage at Kigali’s main stadium at the crowd packing the stands and the pitch.
Singers chanted the anthem “Victory” coined for Kagame’s 2003 win, where he got 95 per cent of the votes cast.
The former rebel’s supporters credit him with ending Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which claimed some 800 000 lives, and ushering in stability and growth, but critics accuse him of undermining democracy and cracking down on opponents.
Some 5.2 million Rwandans were eligible to vote. As counting began in the polling stations, Kagame’s name could constantly be heard as he clocked up votes in the hundreds, outstripping his opponents.
Human Rights Watch noted that over a period of six months “a worrying pattern of intimidation, harassment and other abuses” has emerged.
Several senior army officers have been arrested in recent months and one general, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, narrowly survived an assassination attempt in exile in South Africa.
An opposition journalist who claimed to have uncovered the regime’s responsibility in the attempted murder was shot dead days later.
