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Incumbent Paul Kagame won 93 per cent of the votes in
Rwanda’s presidential election, final results showed on Wednesday,
after a campaign that critics said was marred by government repression.

A grenade was thrown into a rush-hour crowd in the
capital Kigali, wounding at least seven people. Analysts said the
attack appeared to be aimed at producing a political crisis.

Kagame, widely lauded for rebuilding Rwanda and
establishing peace in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, won the last
election in 2003 by a similar margin. Wednesday’s results still have to
be signed off by the Supreme Court.

“We are very happy with the conduct of the electoral
process, from the campaign to the voting itself. We did not get reports
of intimidation from anywhere,” said Charles Munyaneza, executive
secretary of the electoral body.

Turnout for Monday’s election was more than 95 per cent in all the nation’s five provinces.

Kagame’s nearest rival, Jean Damascene Ntawukuliryayo
of the Social Democratic Party, won 5 percent. Prosper Higiro of the
Liberal Party garnered just over 1 per cent and Alvera Mukabaramba of
the Party for Peace and Concord 0.4 per cent.

Opponents said the other candidates were a democratic
smokescreen and stooges of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). They
also said the campaign playing field had been uneven, with three
would-be opposition candidates prevented from registering to contest
the ballot.

One of them, Victoire Ingabire, head of the United Democratic
Forces party who faces charges of funding rebels in neighbouring
Democratic Republic of Congo and espousing genocide ideology, rejected
the result.

Grenade attack

Police spokesman Eric Kayiranga said seven people
including two children were wounded in a grenade blast outside a Kigali
bus park on Wednesday evening.

“It was thrown into the middle of a crowd. It was
rush hour and people were going home. Three suspects were arrested on
the spot,” he told Reuters.

The attack was “a terrible and cowardly act of
violence”, he added in a police statement. “There are no other security
concerns in Kigali or around the country,” he said.

Security agents quickly sealed off the area, denying
access to journalists. Eyewitnesses put the number of wounded at closer
to 20 and said bloodstains were visible on the roadside.

“Grenade attacks are never an attempt to overthrow
the government but rather to influence the political climate. At most
they could provoke the RPF to clamp down on civil liberties and thereby
create a political crisis,” said Rwanda expert Jason Stearns.

Another regional analyst who cannot be identified
said: “It does show that opposition to Kagame is unlikely to come via
the ballot box.” Human rights groups pointed to mounting violence
during the run-up to the election after the shooting dead of a local
journalist and the killing of an opposition official who was found
nearly beheaded in July. The government strenuously denied any
involvement.

“It was a climate of intimidation and exclusion of
the opposition and critical voices. It was a climate of fear,” Carina
Tertsakian, Rwanda researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters by
telephone from London.

The European Union congratulated Rwanda for the calm
atmosphere on polling day and high voter turnout and said the election
marked a new stage in Rwanda’s democratic process and development.

But it said it was concerned by the pre-election incidents and called for swift and transparent investigations.

Kagame has been in control of the land-locked nation
of 10 million people since his rebel army swept to power in the
aftermath of the genocide of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus
in 1994.

Despite being poor in natural resources, Rwanda is a rising star in
Africa for donors and investors with Kagame feted as a visionary leader
and African icon. The International Monetary Fund forecasts its economy
will expand by an average of 6 percent in the medium term.