Parliamentary campaigns begin

Campaigning for Rwanda's first multiparty parliamentary elections - the last phase of the nine-year transition following the 1994 genocide – began on Saturday, 11 days after incumbent President Paul Kagame won a landslide vote.

Three parties and a multiparty coalition, along with 19 independent candidates, will stand in the polls scheduled for 29 - 30 September and 2 October, with up to 207 candidates in the race. Rwanda's ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), has allied with four other parties to run a joint campaign.

The parliamentary polls and Kagame's 25 August electoral victory are seen as landmark events in helping the central African country along the path to democracy in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, during which some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed.

Although three other parties - the Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Party for Progress and Harmony - have announced their participation, observers said that most were allied with the ruling RPF party, and could not be considered to be strong opposition parties. All three backed Kagame during August's presidential race.

Rwanda's parliament will comprised an 80-member chamber of deputies, 53 of whom will be directly elected by voters, and 27 by interest groups such as women, youth and the disabled; and a 26-member Senate, 12 of whom will be elected from each of Rwanda's provinces by local councillors, the rest to be nominated by Kagame and tertiary institutions in Rwanda.

Kagame, a Tutsi, won an overwhelming 95 percent of the vote in the presidential poll. His main challenger, Faustin Twagiramungu, a moderate Hutu, garnered 3.6 percent of the vote and dismissed the results as not free and fair.