President Paul Kagame has said that criticisms about Democracy and Rwanda’s leadership cannot prevent the country from following its development path, because much as critics have their right to talk they are not necessarily right.
During an interview at Rwanda Television airing simultaneously on KT Radio among other media houses, the president said that his has always been to concentrate on his responsibility to deal with a complexity of challenges the country has, like any responsible citizen of this country.
The president said that Rwanda being not an island; it belongs to the region, the continent and the world and every country has its problems and opportunities.
As of critics, he said, that they have their right to talk, but their claims are not necessarily right.
“While it is their right to criticise, it doesn’t necessarily make it right. It can even be absolutely wrong, but it is their right,” he said adding that Rwanda, with all the criticisms is not responsible of the crisis the world is going through.
He mentioned crisis between Europe and Russia, crisis in Africa, Middle East and elsewhere.
“You may be deceived that those crisis are happening in those countries you see on television…but even those countries that are seemingly trying to solve those problems, they are not trying to find solutions, they are part of those problems,” he said.
He said that the people criticizing others, themselves have problems they pretend to want to solve, reason why Rwanda rejects that attitude.
“We listen to those critics but do not put much weight on them unless they are talking about something real that they can support with fact,” the president said.
Kagame said at that level, he would deal with criticism because he see that it is a problem affecting him.
“I will not do it because they are demanding me to do it,” he said.
“Critics is a cliché, people saying too much of nothing and make it sound like there is value in it. We deal with critics and live our life and do what we are supposed to do.”
The president admitted that sometimes critics want to go further to cause more problems and literally crush you, but “Rwanda has got some level of integrity and you may crush someone physically but you would not crush their spirit.
“And speaking about myself, you really can’t crush me. You can’t crush my spirit, you can’t crush my aspirations, my desire.”
From this note, the president further said: “We are not afraid of anything. We have learnt a lot; to be humble, respectful and when it comes to not respecting us, we ignore you. We don’t have to fight over it. Rwanda can be small but we are not small people. We have dignity and self respect and we have decided that you cannot crush us. That’s why we have come from nothing literally.”
They are wasting their time
On this note, the president referred to what he called ‘a conglomerate of journalists who are up in arms against us. They are wasting their time. They should have used their money for something else. Rwanda is there and will prosper every year despite them.”
He was referring to a recent publication from Western journalists who published unchecked content about Rwanda under the so called “forbidden stories’ platform.
