Editor, RE: “To presidential hopefuls: Democracy Made-in-Rwanda is alive and growing” (The New Times, October 23). This is a good representation of President Kagame’s views. The “Participatory Democracy Made-in-Rwanda” is a way to go. We know where we’re coming from, where we are and where we want to be as Rwandans. We can’t afford losing our dignity and hard-earned security as we head towards self-reliance. I doubt if Rwanda can be developed by those who think the country can be run by a government in self-imposed exile (which for them includes prisoners in ‘1930’) or those dreaming to come and finish where they left off during the Genocide against the Tutsi. Rwandans are no longer blind in their reasoning—that ended in 1994 when the RPF toppled the genocidal regime. Rukaka ********************** Rwandans who still believe outsiders know best what is good for our country; that solutions to our challenges can be found elsewhere other than from within ourselves are truly lost souls; they deserve our sympathies but nothing more. Even more importantly, such compatriots are seriously deluded to think they will find many adherents among today’s Rwandans to those kinds of extremely regressive outlook. An exceptionally visionary leadership and its equally extraordinary clearly visible track record mean that Rwandans are no longer prepared to countenance putting their collective fate into the care of just any alternative except that which can show proven comparable achievements. And there just aren’t any such anywhere; not in the country, and certainly not among the noisy lilliputs in self-imposed exile whose only claim to ‘any achievement’ is often to have convinced irrelevant or irrational foreign backers that they have huge numbers of followers in this country. Mwene Kalinda
