Rwanda

National elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. Since 2003, the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) has staged unfree, unfair, and uncompetitive national elections in which it has claimed implausible, astronomically high vote shares after completely skewing the electoral playing field in its favor through the systematic jailing or barring of main opposition challengers and obstruction of main opposition campaigning. With absolute control of state institutions and resources and no checks to the regime’s power, the incumbent’s advantage is insurmountable.

Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Independent journalists reporting on public corruption and human rights abuses have suffered physical and online intimidation, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, or suspicious deaths. Political dissidents and other critics of the regime have suffered the same fates, with the regime waging an exceptionally broad and deadly transnational repression against them.

Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. Rwanda is a patrimonial regime with power concentrated around Kagame and his cronies, and state institutions across all branches of government are completely captured by the RPF. In this context, legislative, judicial, and key oversight bodies do not serve as a check to executive power.