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, vice, president, minister and/or defence:

    Consider the vice president, George Bush, a man so bedeviled by bladder problems that he managed, for the last eight years, to be in the men’s room whenever an important illegal decision was made.
    Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)

    My Poynz, I cannot frame me tune to fayne,
    To cloke the trothe for praisse withowt desart,
    Of them that lyst all vice for to retayne.
    I cannot honour them that settes their part
    With Venus and Baccus all theire lyf long;
    Nor holld my pece of them allthoo I smart.
    Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)

    The future of America may or may not bring forth a black President, a woman President, a Jewish President, but it most certainly always will have a suburban President. A President whose senses have been defined by the suburbs, where lakes and public baths mutate into back yards and freeways, where walking means driving, where talking means telephoning, where watching means TV, and where living means real, imitation life.
    Arthur Kroker (b. 1945)

    He had a gentleman-like frankness in his behaviour, and as a great point of honour as a minister can have, especially a minister at the head of the treasury, where numberless sturdy and insatiable beggars of condition apply, who cannot all be gratified, nor all with safety be refused.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap;
    Find wealth—let no imposter heap;
    Weave robes—let not the idle wear;
    Forge arms—in your defence to bear.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)