Rwanda's presidential vote will be test for entire Great Lakes region

NAIROBI, Aug 22 (AFP) - Rwanda's presidential election on Monday will be momentous for the small central African country - the first since the 1994 genocide - as well as a test case for the entire Great Lakes region, where ethnic conflict has often degenerated into massacres.

The election, a sign that the traumatised nation is finally returning to normal, will be independent Rwanda's first exercise of multi-party politics, introduced in 1991 but interrupted by the bloodbath planned and perpetrated by the Hutu-dominated regime then in power.

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Even if many observers may hesitate to describe the campaign as fully "free and fair", the polls Monday will stand out in relation to many of Rwanda's Great Lakes neighbours - notably Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - where political pluralism is either unknown or has left only painful memories.

In Burundi, which like Rwanda has a large Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority, the first multi-party polls took place in June 1993 as "democracy fever" swept across the African continent.

Melchior Ndadaye and his party were victorious, and he became not only the country's first democratically elected president but also its first Hutu head of state.

Ndadaye took some 65 percent of the vote, beating the Tutsi candidate, outgoing president Pierre Buyoya, who had been tipped to win.

He had won through what came to be called the "Burundi syndrome", or the tendency of voters to pick a candidate from their own ethnic group.

Ndadaye was assassinated four months later by soldiers from the Tutsi-dominated army, an event that immediately triggered massacres of Tutsis by Hutus, followed swiftly by reprisals by the army.

Burundi's civil war has continued ever since, killing some 300,000 people, mostly civilians, according to UN figures, with ceasefire negotiations still ongoing.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Rwanda gave political as well as direct military backing to two rebel movements, the first in 1996-97 and the second from 1998 to 2003, a hard-won transition towards peace has been under way since June.

The various rebel movements have officially lain down their arms and joined forces with President Joseph Kabila. If after a two-year transition "free and democratic" elections are held, they will be the first since 1965.

In Uganda, which since achieving independence from Britain in 1962 has known a series of civil wars and dictatorships, including the brutal period under the late Idi Amin Dada (1971-79), multi-party elections have occurred.

But since Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, his "Movement" system has merely tolerated political parties while severely limiting their activities. Candidates in elections may run only as individuals, without the backing of a party.

In June 2000, Ugandans voted in a referendum against multi-party politics and in favour of keeping the "Movement" system. A new referendum is planned on the same question, but no date has been set.

"In the Great Lakes region, Western-style democracy is possible but under certain very precise conditions," a regional expert said.

"It would require something along the same lines as the Swiss confederation, in order to contain ethnic impulses. In Rwanda and in Burundi there would also be a need for the army or another body to ensure that minorities are respected," he told AFP, asking not to be named.

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