Parliamentary 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 ...

between 16 and 18 September 2013. The result was a victory for 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 ...

, which maintained its absolute majority in the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon R ...

, winning 41 of the 80 seats.

Electoral system

Of the 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 53 were directly elected by closed list

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

with an electoral threshold of 5%. A further 27 seats were indirectly elected by local and national councils, including 24 reserved for women, two for representatives of youth and one for representatives of handicapped.Rwandans vote in parliamentary elections
Al Jazeera, 16 September 2013

Conduct

In the weekend preceding the election, on 13 and 14 September, two grenades exploded in a Kigali market. The Rwandan government blamed the

Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (french: Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, FDLR) is an armed rebel group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. As an ethnic Hutu group opposed to the ethnic Tuts ...

(FDLR), the remnants of the force responsible for the 1994

Genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

. Questions were asked about the credibility of the election as transparent, free and fair.Rwanda: A democracy in the making?
Al Jazeera, 16 September 2013 Voting was otherwise reported as orderly.

Results

References

Elections in Rwanda

Parliamentary A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democracy, democratic government, governance of a sovereign state, state (or subordinate entity) where the Executive (government), executive derives its democratic legitimacy ...

Parliament of Rwanda Election and referendum articles with incomplete results {{africa-election-stub