President Paul Kagame during the press conference
President Paul Kagame has spoken out on allegations of people who say that he never smiles to the camera like other presidents, that he looks severe in his photographs, among other depictions of a terrible leader.
The allegations reached the president through a journalist during the Press Conference that took place this morning in the sideline of Kwibuka30.
The journalist said that the president is always seen as a severe person in his photographs, and this fuels the allegation of his enemies who portrays him as cruel, tyrant and bloodthirsty leader.
File photo- Urugwiro
Laughing at these claims, the President said that this question was around but has never been addressed to him directly.
“For the smile, I think I have to borrow either some talent or actually directly the smile from some people, but the fact that a smile is lacking on me is not my making. Maybe it happens accidentally,” the President said.
The president took some minutes to answer the journalist the question “Who is Kagame”? And said; “Me, is the person you see. I am not hiding anything. What you see in me is what I am. If you are going by the looks or by whatever…what I do is what may describe me better than my physical looks.”
To sum this up however, the President said:”My deeds and my words tend to relate; my looks may be different from that. They may be different from my deeds and how I think.”
But in any case Kagame finds that the description of his looks is subjective.
“There are people who see me, through the looks, as a terrible person. There might be others who say: After all there is nothing wrong looking like that. But to the point you are making about cruel, tyrant, bloodthirsty…you see, you can’t be bad to that extent and hide it. That is difficult. Even if you try to hide it, there is a moment it betrays you,” Kagame said.
“That also, once it has come out or once it is not there, you register the feeling, the description from people who have to deal with you. Some of the things people have said about me or described me as, the judgment is out there either for the people of this country or other people somewhere else , and it wouldn’t be confined to the press, because the press is full of individuals.”
According to the president, those individuals don’t add up to a population that is as big as Rwanda’s, even if Rwanda is very small.
“These are just individuals, five in France, ten in America, three in China, two in Belgium and so on and so forth…if you add all of them up, and they are all negative and saying negative things about me, surely, these can’t be the people that are right, and the rest wrong, They only take advantage of a platform they have,” Kagame said.
The president said, that some people know Kagame just from what those few individuals say, but when they know him through other means like visits, direct interactions… they understand that they were told lies.
However, Kagame said there is a particularity with the Western Press, which is repeating Rwanda’s narrative of thirty years ago today, as if nothing has changed here.
He said they talk about Rwanda, a poor country, which is correct, but this poverty, the way it was in 1995, 2000, is not the same today.
“But someone will keep writing as if what we had today is the same as what we had twenty five years ago,” he said.
As far as the president himself is concerned, he said he has also changed over the years. He said he happens to smile today but in those years, he could also smile, though difficultly.
“There was nothing to smile about, but now with some progress, I can afford some smile,” Kagame said.
“But even then, I looked different and the press may have not liked the way I looked like, but the situation that time, maybe, looked like that itself,” he said adding that he could not pretend and smile while everything around him was precarious.
All in all however, the president said that he will continue to live his life whether people like him or not.
“ I owe my living to not a single individual or country, even powerful ones. No! We are all human beings, sometimes they say, created by God. So, somebody to have powers over me, I can tell, is not possible. Event the most powerful didn’t create me. Who created them first of all? And we are all here just temporarily. If we are lucky we live up to a hundred years.”
Kagame said he will keep trying to do what he is supposed to, do good things that benefit the whole community, and that’s what matters.
