Rwandans are going to the polls in presidential elections, with incumbent Paul Kagame widely expected to win his third term in office.<\/p>\n
The 59-year-old is being challenged by Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana.<\/p>\n
Mr Kagame is credited with the country’s rapid economic development since taking office in 2000.<\/p>\n
But critics accuse him of suppressing dissent and political freedoms.<\/p>\n
Polls across the country open at 07:00 (05:00 GMT) and will close at 16:00.<\/p>\n
Mr Kagame, who represents the ruling RPF party, has widespread vocal support, the BBC’s Tomi Oladipo says.<\/p>\n
The president has even referred to the vote as a mere formality, our correspondent adds.<\/p>\n
Rwanda’s constitution was amended in 2015, giving Mr Kagame a chance to stay in power until 2034.<\/p>\n
The two challengers have complained that their supporter are being intimidated, which they say explains the low turnout at their pre-election rallies.<\/p>\n
The candidates have also accused some local authorities of undermining their campaign.<\/p>\n
The ruling party denies any accusations of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rwandans are going to the polls in presidential elections, with incumbent Paul Kagame widely expected to win his third term in office. The 59-year-old is being challenged by Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana. Mr Kagame is credited with the country’s rapid economic development since taking office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1992,9871,9872],"class_list":["post-341894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-paul-kagame","tag-rwanda-elections","tag-rwanda-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}