Kayumba Continues to Reveal his True Character

Kayumba was once again, recently in the news media attempting to do a smear job on the government of Rwanda as he works to cover-up his crimes of terrorism. From Kayumba’s utterances it is very clear that he has not changed. Kayumba’s current status is self explanatory, going by his record in the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF). He is a victim of a clash between his true character on one hand, and the expected standards that were required of an officer in his position. Kayumba did not only fail to attain the standards expected of him, but also chose to undermine the institution that he was supposed to serve. While Kayumba has accused others in the government and RDF of intrigues, he was, throughout his tenure as a Chief of Staff, characterised not only by the intrigues he seeks to ascribe to others, but also by greed, lack of accountability, cheap popularity and creation of cliques among the Rwanda Defence Force fraternity. Indeed, he tried to bribe some officers into forming cliques using money meant for military operations until some officers went public and exposed him. He attempts to explain away his lack of accountability by arguing that he “submitted his wealth declaration forms to the Ombudsman’s office in time and that he has never appeared on the list of Government officials suspended for lack of accountability”. Kayumba, deliberately misleads the public. He is aware that the definition of accountability in Rwanda is much broader and different from what he tries to portray. While he denies the existence of institutions charged with transparency and accountability in Rwanda, he turns around and cites the institution of Ombudsman and some of the measures it applies against government officials who do not declare their wealth in time. In his recent BBC interview, Kayumba came out in his true colours as a terrorist criminal when he sought to sanitise a well-known regional terrorist organisation; the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). By defending Victoire Ingabire and FDLR, Kayumba was not only publically identifying with a terrorist criminal organisation, but also seeking sympathy from the outfit. Kayumba refers to the war in the DRC as unjustifiable, yet, as Chief of Staff, he actively took part the planning and execution of the war for most of the duration of the conflict. Kayumba writes that he was once commended by the Commander-in-Chief as an “exemplary officer”. Military citations and commendations are not casual comments. They are awarded within institutional framework and recorded accordingly. There is no such citation with regard to Kayumba anywhere in the RDF records. Kayumba’s outrageous claim that he, on two occasions, saved the then Chairman of the High Command of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, Paul Kagame, after everyone else had abandoned him, simply paints the true picture of who Kayumba is. To come to a point where the supreme commander of a fighting force is abandoned by everyone, except one soldier, in this case Kayumba, would have simply meant the end of the war and the struggle. This does not require any one to have any level of military expertise to discern that Kayumba is a pathological liar. Kayumba’s claim that in 2003 he sought permission to leave the army is another example of the liar that he is, as once again, there is no record in the RDF of his application to that effect. While Kayumba has chosen the path of violence against his own people, the Officers who served and interacted with him in the RDF are living witnesses to the efforts the institution expended in trying to help him to come to his senses by urging him to reform. Until he left the country the RDF had continued to give him the benefit of the doubt, but to no avail. This kind of help was not tailored to Kayumba. It is one of the methods used by the RDF to help individual officers and men deal with issues of character and it has, indeed, helped many in the force to gain their balance and stability. Kayumba needs to understand that he is a terrorist who has targeted the Rwandan people, and as long as he continues on this course, he will ultimately be held responsible for his actions. The author is the Defence and Military Spokesman

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Kayumba Continues to Reveal his True Character