Presidential elections were held in

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

on 25 August 2003. They were the first direct presidential elections since the

Rwandan Civil War The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war aro ...

and the first multi-party presidential elections in the country's history.

Paul Kagame Paul Kagame (; born 23 October 1957) is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who is the 4th and current president of Rwanda since 2000. He previously served as a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Uganda-based rebel ...

of the

Rwandan Patriotic Front The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF–Inkotanyi, french: Front patriotique rwandais, FPR) is the ruling political party in Rwanda. Led by President Paul Kagame, the party has governed the country since its armed wing defeated government forces, winn ...

(RPF) was elected to a seven-year term with 95% of the vote. The results were disputed by Faustin Twagiramungu, the main opposition candidate, who argued that "People were controlled, people were forced to vote. It’s not possible that we in the opposition got only 3.7% of the vote. There is something wrong." The elections were widely condemned as fraudulent by outside observers; according to the scholar Timothy Longman, "the Rwandan population experienced the elections not as a transition to democracy but as a series of forced mobilizations that ultimately helped to consolidate RPF rule." The international reactions were nevertheless muted, which, according to

Filip Reyntjens Filip Reyntjens (born 1952) is professor emeritus at University of Antwerp. His academic training is in constitutional law, but he later pivoted towards the study of politics especially of the Great Lakes region of Africa. Career In 1975, while ...

, "reinforced the RPF in its conviction that things would blow over, which they did." In Reyntjens' view, "after failing Rwanda in 1994, the international community did so again in 2003 by allowing a dictatorship to take hold."

Background

Prior to the elections a campaign was launched by the RPF to ban the Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), which was charged with "divisionism". This move was criticized by

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

, which stated "If the MDR is dissolved, conditions for the elections will change even more dramatically. As the only party outside of the RPF with any substantial support, the MDR would be the only one able to seriously contest at least the legislative if not the presidential elections." The MDR was banned, and

Faustin Twagiramungu Faustin Twagiramungu (born 14 August 1945) is a Rwandan politician. He was Prime Minister from 1994 until his resignation in 1995, the first head of government appointed after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) captured Kigali. He then exiled himse ...

was forced to run as an independent.

Results

References

{{Rwandan elections Presidential elections in Rwanda

Election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...