Measuring a candidate's chances of victory by the number of people attending their campaign rallies usually involves a considerable margin of error. But in Rwanda, with just a few days to go before the dual presidential and legislative elections on Monday, July 15, there is little room for uncertainty.

Philippe Mpayimana and Frank Habizena, the official competitors of President Paul Kagame, are struggling to gather a handful of supporters. Meanwhile, the "boss," who has been in charge of the country for 30 years, has an electoral war machine, his party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which fills stadiums with tens of thousands of fans in every corner of the country.

It is easy to understand the lack of enthusiasm of the few declared activists and potential supporters of these two opponents, who have been reduced to the role of stooges for a re-election that has already been decided. This has been the case for all previous elections organized since Kagame's troops halted the Tutsi genocide in 1994 – since they drove out and eliminated the racist ideologues of "Hutu power" and the entire political-military apparatus which, in 100 days, perpetrated the crime of crimes, massacring 800,000 people.

In 2000, Kagame, who had already ruled the country de facto since his military victory, was elected president by a parliament under orders. Three years later, once direct universal suffrage was introduced, he took 95% of the vote. The following election, in 2010, resulted in what remains to this day his worst score: only 93% of the ballots for a turnout of 88%. In 2017, the bar was raised to 98.63%. It is hard to imagine a different scenario in 2024.

A constitutional revision adopted by referendum in 2015 (with 98% of the vote) did lower the presidential term of office from seven to five years. But, in a conveniently-timed legislative decision, this revision wiped out all the presidencies Kagame had accomplished up to that point. He can now remain in power for two further five-year terms, until 2034, if he feels like it.

So what can Mpayimana – a non-party candidate, human rights activist and former journalist trained in France, Belgium and Cameroon – and Habineza, president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR), aspire to? They can reasonably hope to improve on their 2017 scores. Their margin of progression among the 9 million voters is theoretically considerable after the 0.73% and 0.48% of the votes then obtained. But it will remain anecdotal.

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