Kagame controls the Rwandan media, and he is personally popular as a nation-builder after Rwanda’s 1994 genocidal conflict. A bid by the main but tiny opposition Democratic Green Party to block a constitutional was rejected by the Supreme Court.
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But Africa runs on many political tracks, divided between autocracies where elections are a mockery or don’t happen, like Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt and Algeria; semi-democracies without term limits like Ethiopia and Cameroon; democracies with both term limits and competitive elections like Zambia and Kenya; and backsliders where term limits are being removed or were long-scuttled and political reform stifled like Uganda and Congo.
Debates held on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, resulted in lawmakers agreeing that presidential terms will but cut down from seven years to five but still making an exception for Kagame. The United States, a major donor to Rwanda, has said it was concerned by moves to change the constitution.
The legislators also chose to preserve the current two-term limit in a revision in Article 101-subject to extension to one more term, if the electorate deem it necessary.
Chamber of deputies’ speaker, Donatille Mukabalisa, said the provisions in Article 172 was crafted to respond to the “public demands” in whose petitions to parliament early this year, called for removal of term limits so that President Kagame be allowed to extent his stay in office beyond 2017.
Article 167 has yet to be voted on.
Constitutional changes must still be voted on by the upper house, before being put to a national referendum – but is widely expected to be passed with little outspoken opposition. The lower house has 80 seats, but a few lawmakers were absent.
In neighbouring Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza sparked months of protests and a failed coup in April when he made a decision to run for a third term, after a controversial court ruling that the first of his two terms did not count because he was not directly elected.
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Former rebel leader Kagame won worldwide and domestic praise for rebuilding Rwanda after the chaos of the 1990s.
