This is my last term in power - Kagame

President Paul Kagame has said he does not intend to change the country’s constitution to extend his last presidential term beyond 2017.



Speaking on Contact FM, a local radio based in Kigali on a show hosted by Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda, Mr Kagame said, “Personally I don’t want to be involved or in changing the constitution so that I stay in power and particularly changing the constitution for that purpose. I would really hate it.”


He added: “I don’t know why it (change term-limits in a constitution) has been made an African thing. I have seen Europeans attempt to change their constitutions. I saw it in France when (Jacques) Chirac was about to run for a third term. I don’t know why in other places it is not of interest and it has become an African thing. I don’t intend to change the constitution.”

Mr Kagame, who the country’s electoral body officially announced the winner of Monday’s presidential election, said he could have easily been president in 1994 slightly after the genocide but declined the office which Pasteur Bizimungu occupied until March 23, 2000.



“I refused to be the president. And somebody was president for six years. Now people are already talking about it (succession). The same reasons I should have stayed in power (after 2017) are the same reasons I shouldn’t. If you have had a Kagame around for this long and he has failed to identify one who has a capacity to take over, I would take that as a failure on my part,” he added.


Mr Kagame is yet to be sworn in as the new president of Rwanda for a constitutionally provided second and last seven-year term.