David Maraga Applauds Rwanda’s Presidential Election As The ‘Best Ever’
Former Chief Justice David Maraga praised the organization of Rwanda’s recently concluded presidential election, calling it ‘one of the best’ he has ever witnessed.
Maraga, the Head of the East Africa Community (EAC) Election Observation Mission to Rwanda, spoke in Kigali after the polls and praised the exercise for being remarkably peaceful and orderly.
“The electoral process was very orderly and very peaceful. In fact, it is one of the best electoral processes I have seen. It was very commendable, especially on the polling day,” Maraga told local journalists.
Emeritus Chief Justice David Maraga paints a colourful picture of a well organized Rwanda electionpic.twitter.com/XooFYm5lW0
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These findings, he said, were based on comprehensive reports from all polling stations, where he noted a lack of disruptions and commotion during the exercise.
“In our report, we have mentioned that in the final report, we are also going to mention that the organisation was very super. We have seen some elections in some places which are chaotic, they are rowdy and noisy,” said Maraga.
“That was not here at all and my people gave me information from all the polling stations, that there was no noise generally.”
Maraga led a team that oversaw the final stages of candidates’ campaigns.
On Friday, 55 officials from the EAC Partner States and the East African Legislative Assembly were sent to all 30 districts in Rwanda’s four provinces and the city of Kigali.
Incumbent President Paul Kagame won convincingly in the pools to extend his iron-fist rule for another five years.
Kagame, the de facto leader since the end of the 1994 genocide and President since 2000, received 99.15 percent of the vote, the National Election Commission announced after 79% of ballots were counted.
It exceeds Kagame’s previous election victory of 98.79 percent in 2017 and is far ahead of the vote totals of the only two candidates authorized to run against him.
David Maraga Applauds Rwanda’s Presidential Election As The ‘Best Ever’
