KIGALI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame was sworn into office on Sunday for a five-year term, after a landslide win in last month’s election extended his near quarter century in office.
The 66-year-old former rebel leader won the July poll with 99.18% of the vote, after eight other candidates including his most vocal critics were barred by the electoral commission.
I think it’s interesting is that so many autocracies keep up the pretense of democratic and rules-based governance; even North Korea has elections. Same with political trials like you see in so many authoritarian regimes, from modern Russia or China to Nazi Germany – it’s like autocrats need to be able to pretend to themselves that the system they run is fair and just, and that they’re not just tyrants who govern with impunity and enforce rules arbitrarily.
What I don’t get is why? Why bother when it’s immediately obvious to everyone that it’s all a sham? Why not drop the pretense, which everybody knows is just a pretense?
One, it does give some room to dismiss accusations, even if just rhetorically.
Two, when you are able to coerce your subjects to say the sky is green, the sun sets in the East, and Dear Leader won the election, its an exercise of power over them. It feeds the ego and it becomes a litmus test for the disloyal.
Given what happened in Rwanda 30 years ago, and given that we haven’t seen a repeat since then, I think Kagame is doing a good job. I’m not sure how I feel about him being in power for so long, but I also don’t think we’re in the best place to judge (the West) given how abysmally we failed Rwanda over the past 200 years.