Rwandans overwhelmingly give President Paul Kagame a fresh mandate

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has been given a new five-year term after overwhelmingly winning the elections in the landlocked East African country on Monday.

Kagame, 66, who has been president since 2000, won elections in 2003, 2010 and 2017, amassing in excess of 90% of the votes in all of the polls.  This time, he won 99.1% of the votes in yet another one-sided poll. 

Opponent Frank Habineza came second with a mere 0.53%, while Phillipe Mpayimana came third with 0.32% of the vote. 

The results were announced by the chairperson of the Rwanda National Electoral Commission, Oda Gasinzigwa, in Kigali on Monday night.

These were preliminary results as there were still around 2-million votes yet to be counted by 11pm on Monday but they wouldn't make any major difference.

Kagame was commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is credited with ending the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

On Monday, Rwandans came out in large numbers to vote.

A smiling Kagame cast his vote at SOS Gacuriro Technical Secondary School in Kigali's Gasabo district, where the president lives.

Kagame was welcomed by a cheering crowd, largely made up of young voters, who took out their phones to record his arrival and departure.

He spent around 15 minutes at the polling station, shaking the hands of those in the voting queue and waving to the crowd.

For the vast majority of Rwandans, the question was by how much he would win the elections this time. 

While his opponents Habineza and Mpayimana qualified to contest the polls, they have way too little support to give the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front a headache.

Kagame addressed a rally of thousands of supporters on Saturday who braved the heat to hear him speak.

Mpayimana held a poorly-organised rally on Friday which was attended by less than 50 people, most of them from the media.

He addressed an impromptu press briefing at an open soccer field in Kigali, but left the venue without uttering a single word to the public.

Diane Rwigara, seen by some as a possible strong opponent, was barred from standing in Monday's presidential election by the Rwanda National Election Commission. Rwigara was also disqualified from the 2017 poll.

The reasons for her disqualification from the polls were due to her failure to provide at least 12 signatures from eight districts as per Rwanda's electoral regulations.

Gasinzigwa told the media on Sunday that this was one of the requirements for candidates to contest the polls.

Kagame told a media briefing after addressing his final rally that the people of Rwanda still wanted him to lead.

"Every day I am being asked: 'When are you leaving?' It is these people who made me president who are telling me that they still want me to be president," Kagame said.

He said he would focus on staying on the same path in his new term. Rwanda has seen rapid development through infrastructure projects and investments in public healthcare among others.