Being a Rwandan politician is no game but serious business

Being a politician in Rwanda is no joke. And that’s why it is no game but serious business. One needs to have basic leadership qualities, be socially responsible and devoid of any criminal record.

In Rwanda, we have come into contact with people with a strange audacity to redefine the qualification of being a politician. They have attempted to do so by creating fake heroes from biased Hollywood movies. Now it is Ingabire Victoire, a Rwandan citizen who was in the recent past imprisoned for committing serious criminal offenses, only to benefit from a presidential pardon that saw her released. In the eyes of some foreigners, she became a de facto hero, a politician and an “opposition” leader in Rwanda.

To Rwandans, it is definitely a strange phenomenon by its nature but a deja–vu by occurrence. It is more of a sensation that has always depended on various factors, chiefly where one stands on issues. Whenever the so-called "politicians in opposition," most of whom directly or indirectly connected to the genocidal system, fail to achieve their political maneuvers, often designed and sponsored by their foreign allies in a bid to get to power and assist them in hiding some critical facts about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, they decide to engage in trivial propaganda trickeries.

In their well-known tactic, they create figures to be later referred to as opposition politicians, sponsor the creation of political organisations that always failed to meet the minimum standards to be allowed to operate like is always the case in any country.

The foreign sponsors of Ingabire fail to understand that in Rwanda, just like in their own countries, one does not just wake up, pick a piece of paper, choose a name of his imaginary political party and before he or she thinks of going through the legal steps to having a political organization registered, invites the media through questionable means and publicly launches an opposition party.

No wonder Ingabire has changed the name of her so-called political organization for reasons so clear to everyone. The first one being that she was linked through her illegal political organization to some terrorist groups that engage in criminal activities in Rwanda and in eastern DRC.

Evidence collected from the Netherlands confirmed her links to terror groups and as if it assisted her in deceiving her audience, she renamed her “political party” and gave it a new name, overnight.

The strange characters who rally behind the curtains to sponsor her illegal activities and to brand her as the “opposition” leader in Rwanda should appreciate the fact that according to Rwandan law, she cannot lead any political party nor stand in any election due to her criminal records.

The same applies to compatible characters in their own countries. However, the question that imposes itself is whether Ingabire’s foreign sponsors know that Rwanda - just like their respective states - is a sovereign country that abides by the rule of law. 

Rwandans wonder if these foreigners are aware that all their protégé stands for is to spread the double genocide ideology. Well, at least the one thing they need to recognize is that characters like Ingabire have no space in Rwandan politics. If they like it that way, they should feel free to try it back home.

Ingabire’s portrayal as a politician is more than an insult to Rwandans. Foreign media should not package double genocide preachers as politicians. They should understand that Ingabire and her sponsors hide behind their politics and human rights propaganda in attempt to position themselves as relevant.

 Ingabire is nothing else other than a double genocide ideologue, a partner of terror groups engaged in criminal activities and a self-proclaimed politician who has no space in Rwandan politics.

Her so-called political party exists nowhere in Rwanda or abroad. Whoever supports her, supports her criminal activities just as well and should be brought to justice.