Rwanda president reappoints Makuza as prime minister

KIGALI, Oct 11 (AFP) - Rwandan President Paul Kagame reappointed Saturday Bernard Makuza prime minister following parliamentary elections earlier this month swept by the ruling parties, a presidential spokesman said.

"The president has named Bernard Makuza prime minister," Kagame's communications advisor Alfred Ndahiro told AFP. "He should now form a new government."

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In the first elections held since the 1994 genocide, Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and allied parties won 58 of the 80 seats in the lower house, and 12 of the 20 seats in the upper house.

European Union observers said serious irregularities and fraud marred the elections.

Makuza, a moderate Hutu, is not a member of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front, a former Tutsi rebel group that has ruled since the end of the genocide.

A member of the Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) which was banned shortly before the vote for allegdly promoting ethnic division, Makuza remained publicly loyal to Kagame.

The post of prime minister, held by the MDR the past nine years, is largely ceremonial in Rwanda's presidential political system.

The historic legislative vote marked the end of a transitional government which was put in place at the end of the genocide, in which up to a million people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered in a killing spree organised by the Hutu government at the time.

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