Presidency
Paul Kagame became President of Rwanda in March 2000, after his predecessor, Bizimungu, resigned. Three and a half years later, on 25 August 2003, he won a landslide victory in the first national elections since his government took power in 1994 winning 95.5% of the votes.
Kagame is highly critical of the United Nations and its role in the 1994 genocide. In March 2004, his public criticism of France for its role in the genocide and its lack of preventative actions caused a diplomatic row. In November 2006, Rwanda severed all diplomatic ties with France and ordered all its diplomatic staff out of Rwanda within 24 hours following Judge Bruguière issuing warrants accusing nine high-ranking Rwandans of plotting the downing of President Juvénal Habyarimana's airplane in 1994 and also accusing Kagame of having personally ordered the assassination.
As president, Kagame has also been critical of the West's lack of development aid in Africa. Kagame believes that Western countries keep African products out of the world marketplace. In contrast, he has praised China, saying in a 2009 interview that "the Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies."
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Famous quotes containing the word presidency:
“... how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Some of the offers that have come to me would never have come if I had not been President. That means these people are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former President of the United States. I can’t make that kind of use of the office.... I can’t do anything that might take away from the Presidency any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have in it.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)