Reyntjens: EU in the Tank for Kagame

Filip Reyntjens says the EU Electoral Observation Mission's final report on the legislative elections held in Rwanda in September 2008 cooked the books to favor Kagame:

Last Monday, the EU Electoral Observation Mission released its final report on the legislative elections held in Rwanda in September 2008. The presentation happened quite discreetly in Kigali, and the story was not picked up by the international press. When reading the report, one understands this discretion and why this release happened months after the date initially announced....

Indeed, according to several of its members, the mission found out that the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had been too efficient in intimidating the voters and fixing the ballot, as it obtained 98.39% of the vote. This observation is based on a very robust sample size of 24.96% of the total vote (which gives a standard error for the smallest sample of under one percent). Realising that this result looked too “Stalinist”, the regime modified the results: officially the RPF obtained 78.76%, and two other parties were credited with 13.13% (PSD) and 7.50% (PL). Although the mission is fully aware of this manipulation, it is not mentioned in the report, which is thus as fake as the elections it pretends to analyse.