The ruling majority faced little opposition in Monday’s contest:

“…President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front won 42 of the 53 seats contested in Monday’s direct voting, while the Social Democratic party took seven and the Liberal Party won four, [election commission chairman] Chrysologue Karangwa told reporters.


Twenty seven lawmakers are to be elected in indirect voting between Tuesday and Thursday, with 24 seats reserved for women, two for youth representatives and one for a representative of the disabled.


In 2003, for the first parliamentary elections held in Rwanda since the genocide in which 800,000 people were massacred, the RPF secured 74% of the vote.:

In news of that genocide, an Italian priest testified to the U.N. tribunal last week that he told Tutsis seeking refuge in his church to leave. “Yes, I advised them to leave the church as they came [to church] in a manner which does not conform with Christian habits [values],” Tiziano Pegoraro told the court.

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)