Paul Kagame - Vice President and Minister of Defence

Vice President and Minister of Defence

The post-Genocide Rwandan government took office in Kigali in July 1994; it was based loosely on the Arusha accords, but Habyarimana's party was outlawed and the RPF took over the positions it had been assigned. The military wing of the RPF was renamed to the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and became the national army. Paul Kagame assumed the dual roles of Vice President and Minister of Defence while Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu who had been a civil servant under Habyarimana before fleeing to join the RPF, was appointed President. Bizimungu and his Cabinet had some control over domestic affairs, but Kagame remained commander-in-chief of the army and was the de facto ruler of the country.

Read more about this topic:  Paul Kagame

Famous quotes containing the words vice, president, minister and/or defence:

    Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, “galaxy” is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.
    Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)

    Rosalynn said, “Jimmy, if we could only get Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat up here on this mountain for a few days, I believe they might consider how they could prevent another war between their countries.” That gave me the idea, and a few weeks later, I invited both men to join me for a series of private talks. In September 1978, they both came to Camp David.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)