The presidential election in Rwanda on July 15 will pit President Paul Kagame, favourite to succeed himself, against the same opponents as in the 2017 election, the leader of the only authorised opposition party, Frank Habineza and the independent candidate, Philippe Mpayimana.
Frank Habineza, 47, is the founder and leader of the Green Democratic Party (DGPR), the only opposition party authorised by the government.
In 2017, he won 0.48 percent of the vote. Before entering politics,Frank Habineza worked for the Ministry of Lands, Environment, Water,Forests and Mines and for environmental protection organisations. His departure from the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party in August 2009 marked the start of a political journey that has included death threats, prison and exile.
In 2010, his friend and party vice-president André Kagwa Rwisereka was found almost decapitated, an unsolved murder in which the government denied any involvement. Frank Habineza then left for Sweden with his family.
He returned to Rwanda in 2012, leaving his wife and three children abroad. “You can’t change anything by sitting around playing armchair politics,” he told AFP in March: “You have to be inside the system, fighting the system.”
Finally, authorised by the government in 2013, the DGPR – which claims one million members – entered the National Assembly in 2018 with the election of two deputies, including Mr. Habineza.
During his campaign, he promised to increase the salaries of doctors and teachers, abolish property tax and modernise agriculture to
increase production, while protecting the environment.
He is also calling for greater freedom of expression in the country, while taking care not to attack the all-powerful Paul Kagame head-on.
Philippe Mpayimana, independent and “peaceful opponent”
Philippe Mpayimana, 54, is standing for the presidential election for the second time as an independent candidate. In 2017, he won 0.73 per cent of the votes.
This former journalist, who worked in the early days of the Rwandan television channel (TVR) in 1990-91, left Rwanda in 1994 for the DRC, at the same time as hundreds of thousands of Hutus fleeing the advance of the RPF, the Tutsi rebellion that was to end the genocide and take power.
He lived in Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon before moving to France in 2003. Since 2012, he has divided his time between France and Rwanda.
He describes himself as a ‘peaceful opponent.” “I am an opponent in the Rwandan sense of the term. For some people, to oppose is to insult each other, to spend your time saying bad things,” he explains, saying that he is standing in the election “without showing any hostility” and considering “the achievements” of the Kagame years.
“I recognise the good results, but I don’t want my people to keep on applauding. We have to prepare for what comes after,” he explained, saying that he wanted to reform the Labour Code and renovate and develop transport infrastructure.
Since 2021, he has been “senior expert on community engagement” at the Rwandan Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement. He has also written several books, offering his reflections on Rwandan society.
fss/GIK/AFP/APA