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:
“If the vice president thinks it’s disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child, and if he believes that a woman cannot adequately raise a child without a father, then he’d better make sure that abortion remains safe and legal.”
—Diane British (b. 1948)
“When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“A great world leader is gone. Liberty loving people around the globe are sad tonight. We are strengthened in the thought of President Roosevelt’s work for little people everywhere.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings.”
—Ida C. Hultin, U.S. minister and suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 17, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to “Defender of the Faith,” than George the Third.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)