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President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, in the second and last part of his exclusive interview with UBC Reporter for Parliament & international affairs, Kasozi Nasser, speaks about his son joining the army, denies being authoritarian, and hints at stepping down after his next term in office. Excerpts:-
What are the key ingredients to building a fair and democratic system of accountability?
Rules and norms have to be in place and we have to make sure that they actually work. The fairness, the democratic nature of these processes will always be as good as applying them is concerned or as the people who are operating in these institutions. If I am sitting in this place today as the President, if my job is not to make sure that there’s creation of these institutions and systems of accountability and make sure they work fairly then I am not doing my job.
If I am here sitting and thinking that these systems and institutions will try those who are not my friends but when it comes to my friends or my relatives then we should try to make sure that nothing happens, then there is something terribly wrong. But you’ll have leaders at different levels who respect that and others who don’t respect it. The challenge mainly lies with leaders; these ordinary people are always the ones bearing the brunt of accountability.
You’ll find cases involving corruption, for example, that where there was wrongdoing they go for those smaller people but how about the minister or the permanent secretary who was actually behind it?
Do you feel, looking at your own experience and the way you came in to power, that leaders who come into a country whose systems have collapsed need to use their political capital at the time when they don’t have to be subject to renewal of authority, to actually use what has been termed as authoritarianism to get systems in place and do you feel that you’ve had to do that?
You see in getting a fair analysis it is difficult to probably give a clear definition of this authoritarianism. If you start by saying there are no laws in place, there are no institutions in place then let’s put them in place and then people get together.
Most of these things that we have created, the institutions and the laws and everything actually have always been generated from a consensus, from bringing people together. Now how can this be authoritarian? Thinking about what needs to be done and then galvanising people around it and mobilising people to give their views and then you decide the outcome. This is what has happened.
Two, once these things are in place, if I say, you are a minister, there are these accusations; the institutions we put there, the auditor general’s report is saying this, the police that investigated the case is saying this, the ordinary people are saying this, what do you have say about it?
There is a tendency to create difficulty in dividing the line between what is authoritarian and what is working. But I think here, it is more in people’s minds than in reality. Now because this is something you are used to, how do you try a general, how do you try a minister? These are powerful people. In the politics of Africa, you don’t tamper. When this comes up, it’s like; this Kagame, he is not giving people breathing space!
When an ordinary person is being looked for for having broken into somebody’s house and he escapes and crosses the borders and runs into Uganda to his relatives, that doesn’t make headlines but when the general who should be held accountable gets to know about that and escapes it makes headlines.
In my view people are just deliberately blurring these lines over accountability with authoritarianism. I don’t think a matter of authoritarianism has arisen other than me sitting here and insisting that accountability be upheld on the basis of what the country has agreed in terms of rules and laws and norms that govern us.
When you look back at your life story are there incidents that confirm to you what righteous path to take when it comes to such issues?
I’ve lived a mixed kind of life but the kind of life I’ve lived and my nature as a person have informed each other and come together to make me who I am. From my childhood, I’ve always grown up with hate for what injustice presents or has presented to me personally or I have seen presented to others.
From childhood, even at primary school, you ask people who I lived with; I’d always be there to say something or to fight for the weak. It is not something that I’ve had to learn from somewhere. I have always had it in me to always say no or why. And again when it comes to responsibility it’s built on this. I will ask questions. I will want to be sure that it is fair or just and I’ll always strive to be as honest as I can.
I am who I am, I do what I do and in many cases, if not all, I don’t do things I later on come to apologise. If there is a mistake I’ve made and recognise that, I won’t hesitate to say sorry but if it is something I am convinced about, it doesn’t matter how you crack at me, I won’t feel sorry about it. I feel there is that that drives and informs my actions that I feel I have nothing to apologise for and I feel firm about it and I will be honest about it and that’s my life.
You are on course to win another seven-year term in office; will this be your last term in office and do you plan to now start to oversee a process of putting up systems that can outlive you?
Yes I have always had the desire to be of good service to my people, to my country and in the end, really to myself as a person and one of the things I’d love to see our country achieve is to have stability and have this foundation on which people come and go and stability stays and institutions stay. If ultimately I could be of good service in this way and contribute to that happening that’s one of the things I’d be proud of.
Yes there are term limits; there are terms set by the Constitution and respecting that and not respecting that either way has consequences, and have a bearing to what and how a country overall comes out in future.
I’ll want to be the one that I am in making the right thing happen and also respecting the views of the people of this country and understanding very well the circumstances and context in which we operate. So I really have no reasons not to believe that the right thing, fitting me and most important the country and the people. So the rest will be judged by what happens then.
Will handing over power to an elected successor be one of the legacies of your term in office?
That’s what I was pointing at, that’s actually what I meant when I said making sure there is a good firm foundation where things happen irrespective of the individual. Absolutely that.
You’ve done many good things while in office; is there an area or something that you think you failed to do or could have done better or differently with the benefit of hindsight?
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, in the second and last part of his exclusive interview with UBC Reporter for Parliament & international affairs, Kasozi Nasser, speaks about his son joining the army, denies being authoritarian, and hints at stepping down after his next term in office. Excerpts:-
What are the key ingredients to building a fair and democratic system of accountability?
Rules and norms have to be in place and we have to make sure that they actually work. The fairness, the democratic nature of these processes will always be as good as applying them is concerned or as the people who are operating in these institutions. If I am sitting in this place today as the President, if my job is not to make sure that there’s creation of these institutions and systems of accountability and make sure they work fairly then I am not doing my job.
If I am here sitting and thinking that these systems and institutions will try those who are not my friends but when it comes to my friends or my relatives then we should try to make sure that nothing happens, then there is something terribly wrong. But you’ll have leaders at different levels who respect that and others who don’t respect it. The challenge mainly lies with leaders; these ordinary people are always the ones bearing the brunt of accountability.
You’ll find cases involving corruption, for example, that where there was wrongdoing they go for those smaller people but how about the minister or the permanent secretary who was actually behind it?
Do you feel, looking at your own experience and the way you came in to power, that leaders who come into a country whose systems have collapsed need to use their political capital at the time when they don’t have to be subject to renewal of authority, to actually use what has been termed as authoritarianism to get systems in place and do you feel that you’ve had to do that?
You see in getting a fair analysis it is difficult to probably give a clear definition of this authoritarianism. If you start by saying there are no laws in place, there are no institutions in place then let’s put them in place and then people get together.
Most of these things that we have created, the institutions and the laws and everything actually have always been generated from a consensus, from bringing people together. Now how can this be authoritarian? Thinking about what needs to be done and then galvanising people around it and mobilising people to give their views and then you decide the outcome. This is what has happened.
Two, once these things are in place, if I say, you are a minister, there are these accusations; the institutions we put there, the auditor general’s report is saying this, the police that investigated the case is saying this, the ordinary people are saying this, what do you have say about it?
There is a tendency to create difficulty in dividing the line between what is authoritarian and what is working. But I think here, it is more in people’s minds than in reality. Now because this is something you are used to, how do you try a general, how do you try a minister? These are powerful people. In the politics of Africa, you don’t tamper. When this comes up, it’s like; this Kagame, he is not giving people breathing space!
When an ordinary person is being looked for for having broken into somebody’s house and he escapes and crosses the borders and runs into Uganda to his relatives, that doesn’t make headlines but when the general who should be held accountable gets to know about that and escapes it makes headlines.
In my view people are just deliberately blurring these lines over accountability with authoritarianism. I don’t think a matter of authoritarianism has arisen other than me sitting here and insisting that accountability be upheld on the basis of what the country has agreed in terms of rules and laws and norms that govern us.
When you look back at your life story are there incidents that confirm to you what righteous path to take when it comes to such issues?
I’ve lived a mixed kind of life but the kind of life I’ve lived and my nature as a person have informed each other and come together to make me who I am. From my childhood, I’ve always grown up with hate for what injustice presents or has presented to me personally or I have seen presented to others.
From childhood, even at primary school, you ask people who I lived with; I’d always be there to say something or to fight for the weak. It is not something that I’ve had to learn from somewhere. I have always had it in me to always say no or why. And again when it comes to responsibility it’s built on this. I will ask questions. I will want to be sure that it is fair or just and I’ll always strive to be as honest as I can.
I am who I am, I do what I do and in many cases, if not all, I don’t do things I later on come to apologise. If there is a mistake I’ve made and recognise that, I won’t hesitate to say sorry but if it is something I am convinced about, it doesn’t matter how you crack at me, I won’t feel sorry about it. I feel there is that that drives and informs my actions that I feel I have nothing to apologise for and I feel firm about it and I will be honest about it and that’s my life.
You are on course to win another seven-year term in office; will this be your last term in office and do you plan to now start to oversee a process of putting up systems that can outlive you?
Yes I have always had the desire to be of good service to my people, to my country and in the end, really to myself as a person and one of the things I’d love to see our country achieve is to have stability and have this foundation on which people come and go and stability stays and institutions stay. If ultimately I could be of good service in this way and contribute to that happening that’s one of the things I’d be proud of.
Yes there are term limits; there are terms set by the Constitution and respecting that and not respecting that either way has consequences, and have a bearing to what and how a country overall comes out in future.
I’ll want to be the one that I am in making the right thing happen and also respecting the views of the people of this country and understanding very well the circumstances and context in which we operate. So I really have no reasons not to believe that the right thing, fitting me and most important the country and the people. So the rest will be judged by what happens then.
Will handing over power to an elected successor be one of the legacies of your term in office?
That’s what I was pointing at, that’s actually what I meant when I said making sure there is a good firm foundation where things happen irrespective of the individual. Absolutely that.
You’ve done many good things while in office; is there an area or something that you think you failed to do or could have done better or differently with the benefit of hindsight?
