RWANDA: Observers say today's election is a sham to ensure victory for the man who stopped the 1994 genocide, reports Declan Walsh in Kigali.Nine years ago blood flowed like water down these muddy streets and hilltop hamlets.
Today Rwandans will walk side-by-side to the polls to choose a president and, many hope, to put their genocidal past behind them.
For the first time since the 1994 slaughter of over 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, Rwanda is holding a presidential election. The winner will almost certainly be Paul Kagame, the Tutsi rebel leader turned president, who is credited with ending the hellish, 100-day slaughter and imposing order.
But if the poll is a victory for Mr Kagame, it will be no triumph for democracy.
Diplomats, human-rights workers and analysts say the election is a thinly-disguised sham, heavily tilted in his favour. On the dusty streets of the capital, Kigali, there is only one image - that of Mr Kagame. The main Hutu opposition party, the MDR, has been banned; senior officials have been harassed, locked up or "disappeared".
"It is not an exercise in democracy by the standards of anywhere in the world," said Alison des Forges of Human Rights Watch.
A campaign of vilification has been launched against Faustin Twagiramungu, Mr Kagame's only serious opponent and a Hutu. The former prime minister, who once served under Mr Kagame, has been tarred as a ethnic "divisionist" and a "Nazi", and been reduced to a quasi-underground election campaign based in his city apartment.
The unjustified charges suggest the government is manipulating fear to stay in power, said Ms des Forges. "They realise that the genocide constitutes a political resource for use inside and outside the country".
The heavy-handed tactics puzzle because Mr Kagame seemed destined to retain the presidency anyway. Since the 1994 carnage, the stern-faced, wiry president has steadily steered Rwanda along the path of peaceful development. The war is over. The economy has grown steadily largely thanks to generous western aid donations.
In public, Mr Kagame has strived for ethnic inclusivity, drawing Hutu ministers into his cabinet.
Earlier this year he released over 23,000 Hutu prisoners from jail. They will face trial at the Gacaca courts, a form of village justice designed to ease the burden in overcrowded prisons, where another 75,000 prisoners still await trial.
His apparent paranoia about winning may come from Rwanda's ethnic arithmetic - Tutsis make up just 14 per cent of the population, Hutus 85 per cent.
"They are afraid of what might happen in the privacy of the ballot box," said one local observer.
The steely order and discipline that mark Mr Kagame's rule were evident at his closing campaign rallies last Saturday. In a muddy field outside Kigali, thousands of supporters filed through a security cordon worthy of an international airport.
Inside, they politely waved plastic flags from behind a line of school desks as Mr Kagame, circled by bodyguards and soldiers, addressed them.
"Don't fear that you will be harmed when you elect Kagame on Monday. We will protect you," he said.
A potent reminder of the cataclysmic past stands at Ntarama, an hour's drive from Kigali, where around 5,000 people died on April 16th, 1994. Birds chirp in the eucalyptus trees over the deserted Catholic church but the pall of death hangs within.
Piles of human bones and gray ashes are littered between the pews. Four truckloads of Hutu killers shot, blasted and hacked to death around 5,000 cowering Tutsis here on April 16th, 1994. Dansira Nyirabazungu was among the few survivors.
After watching her husband and two daughters die, she played dead under a pile of corpses, then fled at nightfall.
Today she will be voting for Mr Kagame.
"He is the one. He stopped the genocide," she said, sitting on a grassy patch outside the church.
The other main candidate didn't interest her. "I don't know him," she said with a disinterested shrug.
It is not surprising. In comparison with the glossy Kagame campaign, Mr Twagiramungu has been virtually unseen.
Government officials blocked attempts to hold large rallies. State media carried constant negative reports. His only election literature is a business card printed with his photo.
"It's better like this," he said during an interview on his apartment balcony as Mr Kagame addressed his final rally.
"People can slip it into their pockets and nobody will see." Accusations of "divisionism" were absurd, he said. Hutu extremists murdered four of his brothers. He escaped only by leaping over his back wall and fleeing through the UN. After the genocide, he returned to Rwanda to serve as prime minister under Mr Kagame, before quitting 18 months later.
"It is unbelievable," he said. "Why should I care about people who wanted to kill me? At first I was a 'cockroach' [the Hutu killers' term for Tutsi] and now I am a 'genocidaire'. It is pure racism."
Mr Twagiramungu has drawn government fire for suggesting that the Gacaca courts should also investigate Rwandan army war crimes. Tutsi soldiers massacred up to 50,000 Hutus in Rwanda during the genocide and tens of thousands more in neighbouring Congo over the following years.
He said: "We have to tell the truth. Without truth in this country, there can be no reconciliation."
But Kagame supporters defend the tough measures as necessary to cement fragile national unity.
"We must avoid everything that could be a source of unhappiness or a source of division," said local government minister Christophe Bazivamo.
Rwanda is massively dependent on foreign aid, with western donors paying for over 75 per cent of government spending.
However, there are signs that donor patience is starting to crack. Rwanda's ruthless prosecution of the Congo war, in which at least 3.3 million people have died, led to pressure for a military withdrawal last year.
Two weeks ago, the Netherlands suspended €250,000 in election funding in protest at the failure to explain five high-profile "disappearances" dating back to March.
Other western countries say they are unhappy with the blatant election abuses but feel powerless to act. "Do you want to suspend aid to 8 million people?" asked one diplomat.
Tension is also rising on the Rwandan side. At his final rally, Mr Kagame told a cheering crowd: "Bring donations and aid but no more advice."