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Kagame set for landslide in Rwanda presidential vote

KIGALI (AFP) – Rwandan President Paul Kagame headed for a landslide victory Tuesday after early results of a presidential election gave him a seemingly unassailable lead, sparking wild celebrations in the capital.

Tens of thousands of Kagame supporters packed Kigali's main football stadium for raucous festivities combining fireworks with reggae after Monday's poll, which followed weeks of political tension marked by arrests and killings.

At daybreak revellers from Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were still making their way home on foot, and later there was little movement in the streets as the mountainous central African country observed a second successive public holiday.

Kagame won 92.9 percent of the votes cast in 11 out of Rwanda's 30 polling districts counted so far, Rwanda's poll chief Chrysologue Karangwa said.

His nearest challenger, Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was running a distant second with 4.9 percent. The other two candidates had 1.5 and 0.7 percent respectively.

A triumphant Kagame thanked the crowd for "making the right choice" after the announcement was made at the stadium.

"We will continue to work for our country to be always first," he said. "This is your victory and the victory of all Rwandan people."

Earlier in the rally officials announced Kagame had won 96.7 percent of the votes of Rwandans living abroad, sending the tens of thousands of fans in attendance into a frenzy.

Rwanda's poll chief had initially said results for all 30 districts would be available early Tuesday. Media bodies however said Wednesday, or late Tuesday is more likely.

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 muzzling opponents.

Kagame insisted Monday that the election had been democratic and dismissed allegations the real opposition was de facto excluded from the vote.

But some commentators said the opposition was better represented in the 2003 poll, where Kagame scored 95 percent than in this latest election where he faced only parties allied to him and where there was never any doubt he would be overwhelmingly re-elected.

"At least in 2003 there was Faustin (Twagiramungu)," one commentator said, referring to the former prime minister who stood against Kagame and who garnered only 3.5 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile three new parties set up to challenge his rule were excluded from the election. They denounced the poll as a sham.

One of them, Unified Democratic Forces (UDF), Tuesday reported irregularities in the way voting was conducted, saying that in some areas of the north and west voters had their voting cards "seized by the local authorities" on the eve of the poll. The cards were handed back just before the vote with "Voted" marked on them, UDF alleged.

It also said it noted forced attendance in some villages and night voting with no privacy.

Electoral commission officials have reported no major incidents.

Kagame, 52, has been the de facto leader of this central African nation since his Tutsi-dominated rebel group turned political party, the RPF, routed Hutu extremists after the genocide.

Kagame's government, thanks partly to generous international funding, has turned around the economy despite few natural resources, focusing on services and new technology as well as modernising agriculture.

But critics say that is just a facade for a repressive regime.

Human Rights Watch noted that in the six months ahead of the election campaign "a worrying pattern of intimidation, harassment and other abuses" 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 evidence of the regime's involvement in the attempted murder was shot dead days later.