Opposition party “growing by the day”

Professor Alexandre Kimenyi, a member of the coordination committee of the newly-formed opposition party, Alliance rwandaise pour la renaissance de la nation (ARENA), has said the party is “growing by the day”, but would not disclose how many members it had. In an interview with IRIN, he said it was a “national party” open to all Rwandans and denied allegations that it was pro-monarchy. “We are convinced that we will reach our objectives by way of persuasion,” he said. “We will use all means, namely education, discussions, debates, press releases, interviews, diplomacy, media, to make sure that our message is largely diffused.” When the time was right, he added, ARENA would register itself as a party within Rwanda.

Kimenyi, a former senior member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) who is now in the US, accused the Rwandan government of “losing credibility”. He said the movement had “ceased to exist” after it captured Kigali in July 1994. He denied he had resigned from the RPF because he was refused the position of rector of Butare university. “The current leadership doesn’t understand that because of its past experience, the Rwandan population is sophisticated enough and cannot be manipulated any longer,” he said. Kimenyi, who formed ARENA along with the former Rwandan speaker of parliament Joseph Sebarenzi who also fled to the US, claimed Sebarenzi was “demonised” because Rwandan leader Paul Kagame “saw him as a real threat to his presidential aspirations”.

He also claimed many army officers were dissatisfied with the Rwandan authorities and were deserting and fleeing abroad. On the ‘gacaca’ traditional system of justice, Kimenyi said he failed to see how this would work. “I fail to understand how a government can make into law a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ system...where there are two parties,” he said. “In many parts of the country, Tutsis have been wiped out completely and many families have been exterminated.”