Much of that stability is due to the total and complete political dominance of the FPR, the current president, Paul Kagame's party. for the past month the only political party i have been aware of is the FPR with their pins, t-shirts, hats, flags, organized moto parades, stickers, obnoxiously loud mega-phone parades... Apparently the other parties are not organized enough to put these things together. or they are not the president's party so they get no coverage/funding.
i even accompanied my host family to an upscale men's clothing store where they spent 45 minutes deciding which color $35 FPR polo shirt they should buy (the went with blue). $35 is a lot for my host family, considering that is probably 2 weeks worth of grocery money, so it shows their dedication to the party. that and chelsea running around the house at 6 am on election day chanting FPR!
So it was just parlimentary elections (you vote for a party, not a person) and i guess there were 5 parties on the ballot. There are also separate elections for women (who i believe automatically get 24 seats in parliment), youth and disabled (1 person). i'm not quite sure how these proportions are calculated, its definitely not proportionate because after the genocide there are far more women (not to mention disabled people) then men in this country.
Other random observations:
- The city was closed down for the day; no work-bourbon coffee was even closed.
- You vote by thumb stamps, so everyone was proudly walking around showing their purple thumbs
- the national TV station had 12 hour live election coverage for the first time in their history-watch out CNN! (though it pretty much consisted of setting a camera outside a polling station and playing rwandan music in the background...don't think there is an edward r. morrow hopeful here...)
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