Electoral calendar 2010

* Allotment (sortition)
* By-election
* Electoral fraud
* Show election
* Fixed-term election
* General election
* Primary election
* Indirect election
* Local election
* Referendum
* Criticisms of electoralism

Terminology

* Apportionment
* Crossover voting
* Gerrymandering
* Boundary delimitation (redistricting)
* Majority-minority districts
* Nesting
* Secret ballot
* Suffrage

Subseries

* Political party
* Voting
* Voting systems

Lists

* Elections by country
* Election results by country
* Electoral calendar

Politics portal
v • d • e

This electoral calendar 2010 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2010 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included; it should be noted that they are not elections, however. By-elections are not included.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 January
o 1.1 Upcoming
* 2 February
* 3 March
* 4 April
* 5 May
* 6 June
* 7 July
* 8 August
* 9 September
* 10 October
* 11 November
* 12 December
* 13 Unknown

[edit] January

* 10 January: Croatia, President (2nd Round)
* 17 January: Chile, President (2nd Round)
* 17 January: Ukraine, President (1st Round)

[edit] Upcoming

* 22 January: Netherlands Antilles, Parliament
* 25 January: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Parliament
* 26 January: Sri Lanka, President

[edit] February

* 7 February: Costa Rica, President and Parliament
* 7 February: Ukraine, President (2nd Round)
* 21 February: São Tomé and Príncipe, Parliament
* 21 February: Tajikistan, Parliament
* 28 February: Haiti, Parliament
* 28 February: Togo, President
* February: Greece, President (by the parliament)

[edit] March

* 6 March: Iceland, Debt repayment referendum
* 7 March: Iraq, Parliament and Status of Forces Agreement referendum
* 14 March: Colombia, Parliament
* 16 March: Guinea, Parliament
* 20 March: Madagascar, Parliament

[edit] April

* 5–12 April: Sudan, President and Parliament
* 25 April: Austria, President
* April: Laos, Parliament
* April: Somaliland, President

[edit] May

* 10 May: Philippines, President, House of Representatives and Senate (one half)
* 16 May: Dominican Republic, Parliament
* 22 May: Afghanistan, Parliament
* 23 May: Ethiopia, Parliament
* 25 May: Suriname, Parliament
* 30 May: Colombia, President

[edit] June

* 12 June: Slovakia, Parliament
* 28 June: Burundi, President (1st Round)
* June: Czech Republic, Parliament
* June: Laos, President (by the parliament)
* June: Nagorno-Karabakh, Parliament

[edit] July

* 23 July: Burundi, National Assembly
* 26 July: Burundi, President (2nd Round, if necessary)
* 28 July: Burundi, Senate (indirect)
* July: Mauritius, Parliament
* July: Japan, House of Councillors
* July: Tuvalu, Parliament
* July: Suriname, President (by the parliament)

[edit] August

* 9 August: Rwanda, President

[edit] September

* 19 September: Sweden, General
* 26 September: Venezuela, Parliament
* September: Cook Islands, Parliament
* September: Somaliland, Parliament

[edit] October

* 3 October: Brazil, General (1st round)
* 31 October: Brazil, General (2nd round)
* October: Madagascar, President
* October: Bosnia and Herzegovina, President and Parliament
* October: Egypt, Parliament
* October: Tanzania, President and Parliament
* October: Czech Republic, Senate (a third)

[edit] November

* 2 November: United States, House of Representatives and Senate (one third:"Class III" Senators)
* 28 November: Chad, Parliament
* November: Burkina Faso, President
* November: Bahrain, Parliament

[edit] December

* December: Transnistria, Parliament

[edit] Unknown

* Angola, President (by 2012)
* Australia, Parliament (by 16 April 2011)
* Barbados, republic referendum
* Barbados, Parliament (by January 2013)
* Bonaire, Constitutional referendum
* Burma, Parliament
* Canada, Parliament (by 15 October 2012)
* Central African Republic, President and Parliament
* Côte d'Ivoire, Parliament and President
* Denmark, Parliament and EU opt-out referendum (by 12 November 2011)
* Egypt, President (by 2011)
* Faroe Islands, Constitutional referendum
* Fiji, Parliament (by September 2014)
* Guinea, President (by mid-July 2010)
* Hungary, Parliament (by May 2010)
* Ireland, Parliament (by July 2012)
* Jordan, Parliament (by March 2010)
* Latvia, Parliament (by October 2010)
* Malaysia, Parliament (by 2013)
* Malta, Parliament (by July 2013)
* Moldova, Parliament
* New Zealand, Voting method referendum (by 2011)
* Palestine, President and Parliament
* Poland, President
* Qatar, Parliament (by June 2010)
* Singapore, Parliament (by 2011)
* Spain, Parliament (by March 2012)
* Sri Lanka, Parliament (before 22 April 2010)
* Sudan, Darfur amalgamation referendum (by July 2010)
* Sudan, Southern Sudanese independence referendum (3–5 January 2011)
* Tonga, General
* Ukraine, Parliament (by 2011)
* United Arab Emirates, Parliament
* United Kingdom, General (by 3 June 2010)
* Wales, Devolution referendum (by 5 May 2011)

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Servilien Sebasoni and New Rwanda in the middle

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, 42,
Mother and Professional
2010 Controversial Rwandan Presidential Candidate
(Credit)

(The blog Colored Opinions chronicles the intricacies of the current political configurations and the uphill battle of opposition parties of Rwanda. And Ann Garrison of Colored Opinions documents Victoire Ingabire’s rocky return from exile. First-person narrative in French of Victoire Ingabire's life, here. And Wikepedia page in English, here.)

There’s an African country run like North Korea.

It’s not Zimbabwe with its tropical version of Jim Jong-il: Robert Mugabe, the old geezer who refuses to die; a convenient boogey man to showcase what’s wrong with Africa. Robert Mugabe, a ready-made “replacement killer” for Idi Amin.

Well, here’s a headline: Zim is on the right path, with the ever-resilient Morgan Tsvangirai who is fighting toe-to-toe with Mugabe, slowly but surely reversing the economic demise of a once wealthy country. Until the final demise of the walking-dead who is masquerading for the moment as the unbreakable “iron man.”

The African North Korea I’m referring to is Rwanda. In point of fact, and just due north to it, there’s another tropical North Korea: Uganda…

Rwanda and Uganda were once hailed as countries of the “African Renaissance.” Renaissance. Rebirth...
And, Rwanda in particular, is literally being reborn.

The analogy is false, the real North Korea stands out as Mao Zedong’s paper tiger—Rwandans aren’t starving for example. And Kagame—God be with him!—may pass on today but the Rwandan regime will prove to be sustainable and will live on.

There are precedents of stifling dictatorships in Africa. One could argue that Yoweri Museveni is midway on his path to rejoin the lineage of other African strongmen who have lasted or are still lasting a lifetime in power—to name a few, Congo’s Mobutu Sese-Seko (32 years), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (42 years) and Cameroon’s Paul Biya (28 years with the meter running)… Museveni has been the president of Uganda since 1986 (24 years) and shows no sign of relinquishing power.

But these Big Men didn’t have the un je ne sais quoi real stuff. Like the managerial, engineering skills and motivation to devise a biopolitical machine built to last. I should stop right there before I get ensnared into an extended metaphor...

The events unfolding in Kigali prior and after the return of a woman who could have been an Obama for both Rwanda and Congo are mesmerizing. Frightening.

There won’t be an Obama this year in Rwanda called Victoire Ingabire. And tough luck for the Congolese. A breath of fresh air, though, to hear out of the blue a Rwandan politician say the following in a radio interview:

“military expansionism: you know perfectly well that General Kagame’s military had attacked the Congo. Because of that war, Congo's death toll rose to more than 5 million of human lives.”


Moving on... Kagame has been in power since 1994, that is, 16 years. Some could claim he was only vice-president during the 6 years when Pasteur Bizimungu was the president of the country. But any serious observer knows that Bizimungu was a figurehead who was thrown in jail at the first inkling of insubordination. My estimate of the time span Kagame has been in power does stand indeed.

Truth be told: Museveni is but a child compared to Kagame.

We could easily overlook the dictatorial drifts as venial sins and point to economic miracles and good governance. We could likewise turn a blind eye to what F. Reyntjens calls the “privatization and criminalization of public space” in both countries. To put things bluntly, the governments in these two countries operate as criminal enterprises run by the military. They share those attributes with other countries in the region, including the DRC next door.

We could even laud today in hindsight the Pinochet regime as having been a good “free-market fascism” that had positive lasting impact on Chilean economy…

As a semblance of democracy is the “universal” acceptable norm today by donor countries, Rwanda and Uganda subject themselves to the travesty of the cycles of democratic elections.
You could look at Museveni and Kagame as clever players. They’ve both devised backstopping mechanisms to prevent the democratic sham from sliding out of bounds…
Kagame is not Museveni.

Museveni at times devises superficial backstops.

Breaking with the mold, Kagame is taking a stand and drawing a line in the sand. He sneezes and France catches a cold. He gets into the Commonwealth of Nations right under the nose of Nicholas Sarkozy in Trinidad, sending Bernard Kouchner begging for a handshake in Kigali. He could also quit any time he wants to.

In Uganda, credible opposition candidates are just arrested and charged with, say, rape—based on accusations made by government-paid rape victims—and, for good measure, charge them with “terrorism” too. This is what happened to retired Colonel and medical doctor Warren Kizza Besigye Kifefe of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) before the 2006 elections. While the opposition candidate is entangled in unending court proceedings, the irremovable Museveni sails to electoral triumph.

In Rwanda, Kagame has 5 more sophisticated backstops. In fact, they are not even backstops. They are something more permanent, the biopolitics of a social formation.
First, ban all reference to tribe and ethnicity while “barely concealed by the ban on ethnic labels, ethnic discrimination has since emerged as the hallmark of the Kagame regime, to an extent unprecedented in the history of Rwanda” (René Lemarchand).

Second, cripple all dissent preemptively with the threat of “revisionism” or “genocide denial.”

Third, line up the opposition with stooges with ridiculous political platform like “full employment, regional security, and progressive taxation”—complete with choreographed pre- and post-electoral accusations by said stooges of attempts by the incumbent to “silence [their] views.” During the 2003 presidential elections, there were two such candidates opposing Kagame that allowed him to get—without any rigging—95.1% of the votes.

And Fourth—and this is Kagame’s masterstroke—let anyone form their political parties but—hold and behold!—according to Ann Garrison, in order to “register and get a ballot line in Rwanda, a party must first convene, and the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda has now tried to convene five times, only to be met with bureaucratic obfuscation and on October 30 [2009], violence.”

The violence meted out against the members of the Democratic Green Party described by Ann Garrison with photographs taken with cellphones was reminiscent of the technique uncovered by Gérard Prunier in his book Africa’s World War:

“songamana: From the [Swahili] verb kusonga, to ‘press together’ [I’d instead translate the verb as to ‘knead’]. A form of crowd control using humiliation practiced by the RPA [Rwandan Patriotic Army] where many people are made to squat tightly together on the ground while being hectored by an officer.”

Nowadays the “hectoring” is preceded by police agents provocateurs masquerading as disgruntled party members resorting to blows to get their points across—prompting the police, lurking by as if by miracle, to suddenly materialize, beat everyone to submission... then “kneading” and “hectoring” them.

No glitches in the perfect setup. Glitches happen on the other side of the border, in the DRC. Not on this side of the border. We are dealing with professionals here.

Kagame’s first 7-year term comes to an end this year. There are presidential elections in August. And the RPF machine suddenly realized that this electoral cycle there are young, determined passionate and iconoclastic opposition candidates who won’t be bullied to play the 2003 script.

So another script has to be written. The script called the final act of the “outing” from the closet. No more playing the clown for “two constituencies” (domestic and foreign). Time to unify the constituencies. To lay these things in the open. To scare Victoire Ingabire into submission while throwing into the dustbin the narrative of “universality” and telling the producers of this discredited narrative—that is, so-called Western “experts” and NGOs—that things have changed once and for all. We're tired of playing the fools. Go ask leaders on the other side of the border, in the DRC, to continue playing this silly game!

And Kagame isn't some mercurial statesman like Museveni who, like a good Congolese politician, at times says things he doesn’t mean. In fact, Kagame has a keen sense of verbal economy. He’s a strategist. He’s got plenty of big guns around: technocrats and intellectuals to do the talking and the doing. And these guys happen to be academic heavy weights.

Way before Victoire Ingabire’s return, the RPF brought out the heavy artillery. In the person of the crafty litterateur, professor, writer, contentious pamphleteer, communication director and spokesperson Servilien M. Sebasoni.

The man was born a wordsmith extraordinaire. A prolific analyst.

He tagged Victoire Ingabire as the “présidente virtuelle du Rwanda” [Rwanda’s virtual president]—a scornful moniker that instantly went viral on Rwandan blogosphere.
By late November, Sebasoni didn’t even think Ingabire would dare to show up at Kigali International Airport.

In the concluding paragraph of the scathing statement he unleashed in Kigali on November 26 with all the flourish of his trademark high-brow French style, Sebasoni scoffs at the pretentions of Ingabire while painting a chilling scenario of the aftermath of elections fraught with controversies:

“the Rwandan presidential election might take place in 2010, if the virtual president, who never ends coming home, decided not to come in Rwanda. On the one end, she has sufficiently prepared her constituents for this eventuality, by tapping into the anthology that her diaspora has made up against Kagame; on the other hand, the alternative that her partisans imagine in the event isn’t enticing for a candidate who is loath to violence. Who would have a stake, in effect, in seeing the upcoming elections lead into a “Kenya” or a “Zimbabwe,” if the results were to be contested by the opposition?”

The pamphlet is even more portentous as it strips the electoral process of any previous pretenses by the regime to appear playing by the rule of a universal canon of democracy—a despicable “IMITATION” (capital in the original) of western standards.
There’s a need to invent the African future of political play, Sebasoni asserts (triggering by association in my mind Mobutu’s maxims of Authenticity: “The African authentic political system isn’t a system of opposition but a system of cohesive juxtaposition”):

“This incapacity to think by oneself, to say something else instead of systematically plundering all the clichés and commonplaces and other acknowledged ‘experts,’ this psittacism is frightening for a generation forced to invent a future, at the moment when Western universalism is leaking at the seams and starts to be contested and put into question as well in Asia as in Africa, even right down on its own turf, in Europe and America in the wake of resounding fiascos. There is in fact a big chunk of books that are coming out to denounce the claims of the Western model to universality. Just read. Jean Ziegler, Hatred of the West (2008); Amin Maalouf, A World Adrift (2009); Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism (2008); George Corm, L’Europe et le Mythe de l’Occident [Europe and the Western Myth] (2009). And several more other books. You will discover that the famous ‘international standards’ about which they go on and on are only Western standards to boot. It will soon be permitted to be an honest person without being a Westerner. To take advantage, however, of the insufficiencies of the new Rwanda and to go along with its detractors could be a strategy chosen wisely. The fact remains nonetheless that a political project that would discard individual creativity of the nation is by no means meant to last, even though it is true that the poor have to account to two ‘constituencies,’ the aid donors and the people. Such an anomaly could only be transitory and couldn’t serve as a lasting pact between the politician and the people.”

This guy is brilliant and his prose dense with meaning, let alone this impressive library. I've to give it to him: no one reads anymore in the DRC... The part of "plunder," of "psittacism" ("parotting"): this is heavy stuff lifted from developmental and clinical psychology and applied to cultural theory: that is, "alienation" (again, I stumble upon Mobutu). This is a systematic and chilling exercise in deconstruction. Chilling because this guy might as well tear to pieces “Western standards” of DIPLOMACY and read the riot act to the bickering politicians in Kinshasa as follows: "Hey, guys, this is the 'new normal' in diplomacy in the Great Lakes; our way or the highway!"... Maybe they've done it already!

“Pact between the politician and the people.” Uncanny sentence…

Once again, I’m reminded of Mobutu who kept repeating: “Mobutuism is the complicity between the Guide and his people.” (The man had "bloated" himself to fill up a whole country!) But I know that Mobutu was a “virtual” moron—to borrow a qualifier dear to Sebasoni. Did Mobutu come up independently with all this stuff? I don't think so... And still, I see a a common thread linking Sebasoni and Mobutu as if they tapped into the same well. There’s a genealogy… I also remember the persistent rumor circulating in Zaire at the time that claimed that the ideas of Authenticity were implanted into Mobutu’s mind by Barthélémy Bisengamina Rwema, a Rwandan engineer and intellectual, who served for a long time as Mobutu’s Chief of Staff. And the rumor went on to say that Bisengimana got those ideas from the books authored by Rwandan polymath ALEXIS Kagame… speculation no doubt.

How are the donors going to react to this riot act of new non-Western democracy that doesn't care about "universal standards"? For despite the riot act, Rwanda still needs foreign dollars to bridge the electoral budget deficit:

“The mountainous country faces a huge hike in the cost of holding the election.
The 2010 vote will cost 11 million dollars (7.7 million euros) compared to some 4 million dollars in 2003, according to state radio, which quoted the country's electoral commission.

'The price of voting materials has gone up since 2003 and the number of voters has also risen,' the executive secretary of the electoral commission, Charles Munyaneza, told AFP.

The Rwandan government will bear more than half of the cost of the election, with the rest contributed by donors such as Britain, the European Union and the Netherlands, the radio said.”

We know that Rwandan leadership never backs down… August is just round the corner, let’s wait and see.

Saturday, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza—“who piles up beautiful names (Victoire, Don, Consolation)” (dixit Sebasoni) — returned to New Rwanda after 16 years of absence and caused an uproar for what she said and angered the powers that be.
New Rwanda may not be the place for her. What a waste with such a beautiful campaign logo: Victore2010… And, BTW, we need brilliant women like her in the Congo.

Madame Victoire, Don:

Please, move to Kinshasa and get Congolese nationality. It’s easy, believe me. It will be your Consolation prize for returning to Africa… Time isn't ripe in New Rwanda for your kind of discourse...Maybe never!... To speak in tongue like Servilien Sebasoni, there's a massive semiotic fraud taking place in New Rwanda, just like under Mobutu's Authenticity in Zaire... It's a waste of time... You belong in the DRC, where no one would ever dare get us back to that sham... Even in the darkest moments when Kisangani was under the boot of Rwandan and Ugandan occupational forces... There's a direct flight from Kigali to Kinshasa, I believe or via Nairobi... Think about it... That’s where you stand the chance of fulfilling your destiny of another kind of Obama of the African Great Lakes region.

Rwanda politician prompts row over genocide memorial

A row has erupted in Rwanda about the genocide memorial not reflecting the plight of Hutus in the 1994 massacres.



During the 100-day genocide, Hutu militias systematically killed about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

But opposition politician Victoire Ingabire, who has returned to Rwanda for the first time since the genocide, says Hutus were also killed by Tutsis.

Genocide survivors group Ibuka says her comments amount to "genocide negation" and she should be prosecuted.


Theodore Simburudari, the head of Ibuka, told the BBC the opposition United Democratic Forces leader should also be tried for "fuelling ethnic hatred".


Victoire Ingabire (Photo from UDF website: www.fdu-rwanda.org/)
People who were massacred in this country cannot simply be forgotten
UDF leader Victoire Ingabire

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in the capital, Kigali, says Ms Ingabire made the comments during her visit to the Kigali genocide memorial on Saturday.

Following the furore sparked by her remarks, Ms Ingabire told the BBC's Great Lakes Service she was not attempting to belittle the genocide.

"Clearly, reconciliation has a long way to go," she said in an interview conducted in Kinyarwanda.





"People who were massacred in this country cannot simply be forgotten," she said.

"Looking at this memorial, it only stops at the genocide committed to Tutsis; there is still another role that concerns the massacres committed to Hutus.

"Their relatives were also killed and they are asking themselves: 'When will our concerns be discussed?'"

Judicial authorities have so far not commented on the request by the genocide survivors.

But the BBC reporter says considering the sensitivity of the subject, constitutional statutes and other laws regarding the genocide, Ms Ingabire is undoubtedly courting controversy as she moves to register her party to run for the 2010 presidential elections.

Ms Ingabire left Rwanda before the genocide began and has spent the last 16 years in Europe.

The elections due in August will be the second presidential polls held since the genocide.

Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s arrival in Rwanda, an utter reminder of the RTLM!

Indeed, since the vitriolic vocal president of the coalesced nostalgic so-called opposition political parties in exile, a.k.a FDU-Inkingi, announced in September last year the party’s decision to come and compete in the 2010 Presidential elections, we have in this column, informed the public of who they are but also encouraged them to come in the hope that their leader would get an opportunity to erase her totally antiquated image of Rwanda with the sparking reality on the ground.

It was however a shock to me and others in the Rwandan boat of today, when she on arrival proactively continued with her boots of a hardened genocide denier in her characteristic divisionist/hate ideology.

Some among us got the utmost scare of the year when we woke up to her voice and messages on airwaves that sounded identical with that of Ms Bemeriki Valerie on the infamous RTLM during the man-made ‘apocalypse’ of 1994.

She went on to claim that “I am a daughter and a mother, moved by the misery and humiliations of my people…..” Here I got utter consternation, a self-styled presidential contender and sorry to say, munyarwanda mother, agitating and propagating ethnicity, hate and divisionism well knowing where Rwanda was in April 1994?

With Ingabire Victoire’s latest clarity of what her intentions are as testified in her maiden speeches and acts since her arrival in Rwanda on 16 January, we are pretty convinced now than ever that she did not ‘live in the past Rwanda’ while in Holland out of shear ignorance of what Rwanda today stands for but rather behaved as she did out of an ideological conviction that extremism and ethnicity is the route to achieve her political dream and the cherished high office of the land.

A friend intimated when he read the infamous ‘revolutionary’ I mean hate speech of Ingabire, that both the latter and some Rwandans were only lucky that she was out of the country during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, otherwise she might also have participated, and probably would, with the help of Interpol or others, now have been in the gallows.

Aware of the threat that reconciliation and other relevant policies like Gacaca and TIG are a threat to Ms Ingabire’s extremist ethnic ideology which she has as a tool for her political ambitions, the controversial Rwandan lady is out in arms to target these government policies in the hope that she could derail these bonafide Rwandan initiatives that aim at building a Rwandan State that belongs to all Rwandans.
Ingabire should, in this regard, be asked to state in very clear terms her position as regards three crucial issues concerning national security, reconciliation and sustainable stability.

Although in the Imvo n’Imvano programme on BBC of 9 January 2010, Ingabire dismissed her FDU-Inkingi’s roots in the RDR as RPF propaganda, we believe that this fact should not be taken lightly.

We find it necessary to remind the public what RDR really is and what it stands for so that whatever Ingabire pretends, she together with her party are seen in their true context….

“RDR is the first criminal organization to acquire international recognition through Genocide laundering. It was officially launched on 3 April 1995, with offices in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Canada,” according to Jean Kambanda’s testimony at the ICTR.

Ex-FAR military leaders, including Col. Bagosora, orchestrated the creation of RDR and, from the outset, sought to control it. As a matter of fact, on 29 April 1995, the High Command of FAR (Ex-Rwandan Army) issued a statement in Bukavu, divorcing itself from the Hutu ‘government in exile’, the group of Hutu extremists that had been its partner in the genocide.

FAR believed that the exiled government had become ineffective in serving the interests of refugees in Zaire and extremist Hutu everywhere and instead declared its unswerving support for the RDR.

In 1998, the RDR admitted that it was created to bypass or circumvent the embargo imposed on the genocidaire government in exile. Since then, there was a ploy by the group to — through the concepts and language used in the RDR’s numerous press releases and discourse — depict the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as a “civil war”, “tragedy”, and “crisis”, or even as Ingabire has lately endeavored, insinuate a double Genocide.

In the same strategy, the RDR, and lately the FDU-Inkingi, have relentlessly accused the RPF of “sensationalizing the Genocide and using their version of the facts” as political capital, in an attempt to win international sympathy and donor aid, “using, for political benefits, the tragedy which has plunged into mourning the Rwandan people…” (Quoted from RDR Political Platform)

Most recently, the November 23, 2009 report of a UN Group of Experts confirmed with evidence that, being an emanation of genocidal forces, FDU Inkingi and thus RDR, is still in close collaboration with FDLR in a strategy of overthrowing the current government.

The Group of Experts has gathered substantial evidence about existing collaboration between FDLR and FDU-Inkingi. It disclosed that the FDLR military leaders are in close contact with Diaspora members of the FDU-Inkingi political group in Belgium, including J.B Mberabahizi (FDU Inkingi’s Secretary General), and Naomi Mukakinani, wife to FDU’s Commissioner for Social Affairs, Michel Niyibizi.

The Experts report also affirms that Victoire Ingabire has attended the so-called “Inter-Rwandese Dialogue” meetings along with FDLR supporters which they both strongly advocate for.

Though unsurprising, given the common ideology and background, this collaboration between the FDLR and FDU Inkingi is rather disturbing and Ingabire Victoire had better come clear of these accusations if she is to earn any trust of Rwandans. She must also account for her role in her original party, the RDR, as it is the one ideologically leading the FDU-Inkingi coalition.

In her end of the year 2009 propaganda speech, Ingabire Victoire stated that “Gacaca courts and even Interpol have become tools to harass or get rid of individuals on behalf of the Kigali regime!” She has several times vowed to close all the Gacaca courts once she gets into power.

She seems to know that actually most of the said courts have already closed after they, more successfully than not, tried over a million cases of suspected genocidaires.

The underlying issue here is that she is obviously a Genocide denier, and yet those tried by these courts are birds of the same feathers in ideology, thus her defense for them, including those warranted by the ICTR through Interpol as genocide suspects.

This is indeed neither surprising as one of her RDR mission was to constitute defense support to ICTR prisoners prosecuted for the crime of Genocide.

Ingabire should substantiate to the Rwandan public and the international community at large, her characteristic allegations against both the Gacaca and Interpol and come clear as to why she stands aside and advocates for the Genocide suspects who are the very people targeted by the two institutions.

Another very sensitive issue that Ingabire must also come clear about is her unrelenting undermining of the concept of “Genocide ideology” as defined in the Rwandan Constitution.

In the mentioned BBC program and her other numerous propaganda speeches, she shamelessly sustains that “the Genocide ideology is an RPF invention to deny those opposed to it …”

For an uprightly thinking Rwandan, except when he/she is still committed to pursuing the “unfinished genocide”, to state that there is no Genocide ideology in a country that has just experienced the very Genocide, is simply tantamount to genocide denial, an expression of that genocide ideology itself, a crime in the Rwandan law and I dare add, even under the International law given the gravity of the crime of Genocide.

The Rwandan public and peace lovers in the International Community should educate themselves on the true intentions of the likes of Ingabire, listen to their discourses and double-edged sword talk in order to appropriately get an informed opinion on what would happen if any of them was to, God forbid, rise to the highest office in Rwanda.

After this long silence that was premised on the hope that Ingabire would be the ‘Prodigal daughter of Rwanda’ once she physically got the realities of the Rwanda of today, we are now motivated than ever to keep this column active and continue contributing as other peace loving people of the World, to the Never Again principle.

muhetofe@gmail.com