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01.11.2015 Letter

Begging My Beloved From Afar: An Open Letter To President Paul Kagame

By Joseph Ackon-Mensah
PAUL KAGAMEPAUL KAGAME
01.11.2015 LISTEN

Dear Your Excellency,

I love you, Your Excellency. I admire you, Mr President. I tell my friends I am proud of you. You have become an example…

Please, forgive my bad manners. My enthusiasm nearly took the African in me. Sir, I send you greetings from the corner of my room in a village somewhere in the Western Region of Ghana. I believe you are very fine. No doubts about that! I write to you on my own behalf. I cannot tell if others share my views, but I believe some few may be like me.

My admiration for you is hugely hinged on your carving what has been branded 'The New Rwanda' from the old one that had its clothes tattered like an abandoned kite of a village boy. Your history is not my focus here. We all have our history, and they are usually chequered. The question is whether we are relevant to others now.

That Hutu-Tutsi gap, the chief architect of Rwanda's woes, has been tremendously closed by the kind courtesy of your handiworks. Bravo! Now, the Rwandan does not need a 'laissez passer' before he/she can travel from one part of the country to the other.

Taking a country that just two decades ago was turned desolate with most of it infrastructure and human resources dissipated after an estimated 800,000 souls were lost through a genocide, and making it a pure middle income one is commendable.

After, winning power in 2003, you did not abandon your Vision 2020 agenda: it was not just a campaign gimmick. And for the Vision's progress to be rated “quite encouraging” by an independent Belgian body in 2012 speaks well of you. And these words from you in 2013 were equally encouraging, no matter its political tone: “Our thinking is based on people. In our national budgets, we focus on education, health. We look at technology, skills, innovation, creativity. We are always thinking about people, people, people”.

Rwanda's per capita gross domestic product rose from $567 in 2000 to an estimated $1,592 in 2013, with the real GDP growing by 7.0% in 2014, something which is beyond the initially projected 6.0% and the 4.7% recorded in 2013. You did that!

It is your ardent vision to see to it that Rwanda defies the war scars to be an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hub in Africa. Thus you have completed a 2,300-kilometre (1,400 mi) fibre-optic telecommunications network that is aimed at providing an effective broadband services and facilitating e-commerce.

What need I say more about your exploits? Is it your free education for the twelve-year pre-university schooling journey for each Rwandan learner in state-run schools? Is it your astonishing increase of the number of universities from 1 in 1994 to 29 in 2010? Or, is the health insurance you have made mandatory for all Rwandans, thus covering over 90% of the population as of 2010?

There is no disputing the fact that you have done better than some of your colleagues who have been blessed with a lot of natural resources and long durations of relative peace.

However, my admired President of Rwanda, the day, in April 2014, you said to students and faculty staff during a speech at Tufts University, US, “I'm asked when and whether I plan to leave office – right from the start of my first political term in office. It is as if I am here just to leave”, the morsel of fufu (a Ghanaian cassava-made food) which my hand was conveying to my mouth kept stuck in my palm. The cave of my mouth was widely opened, not to receive the morsel, but the quake ignited by your words.

Your Excellency, I was further stunned when you added this: “Let's wait and see what happens as we go. Whatever will happen, we'll have an explanation”. The shock stemmed from the fact that, at the time you were speaking, the Rwandan Constitution, Article 101, had a provision that an elected president has a seven-year term but can go for another term to make it fourteen, and that should end it. Logically, after 2017, you should be honourably called 'Paul Kagame, the Former President of the Republic of Rwanda'.

Then, I later heard, Your Excellency, that many Rwandans are calling on you to stay in power even after 2017. I said, “Wow! This is the first time I have heard this in my adored continent that a president has done so well that even his people want the constitution changed so he can continue to stay in power”. Observing from afar, I had some mixed feelings.

Rwanda's supreme court has also ruled in October this year that you can seek another seven years if you wish to, saying it “All depends on the opinions of the people”. What that means is that the move by the opposition in your country to stop the unlimited term stance has been annihilated.

What hit me hard was what I read yesterday that a stand-alone article, Article 172, had been inserted into the Constitution of Rwanda, by the Lower House, that provides that your are permitted to rule Rwanda as long as you wish when your term ends in 2017. The Article reads, “the President of the Republic in office at the time of commencement of this revised Constitution – that is President Paul Kagame in this case – shall continue to serve the term for which he was elected, and the provisions of Article 101 of this revised Constitution shall be applicable after the expiry of a seven-year term”.

Mr President, I know your good people are thanking you for the massive transformation, but for the sake of your glorious legacy that I still want to boast about, do something different.

I do not want to mention names in Africa, but I cannot remember how any of those who are enjoying what is being served you now have been able to maintain a clean legacy. The disadvantages have always surpassed the advantages.

You still have some fresh blood in you. You can still sit back and be a reservoir of wisdom for those that will come after you. You can be a distinguished resource person moving from one part of the world to the other educating and informing the youths and the world in general that Africa too can show examples in leadership.

We have been pictured badly for long, and I see in you the opportunity, the glory, and the platform to repaint Africa. For now, you are the shining example we can present.

Therefore, my beloved, disappoint your people positively, and “the glory of the latter day shall be more than the former”.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph Ackon-Mensah,
A Final Year Student Journalist,
GHANA.

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