The winding roads to this town in northern Rwanda were lined with election posters for the man who has been president for decades: Paul Kagame.
Businesses were ordered shut and women swept the streets before the president’s convoy swooshed by, heading for a huge rally in a stadium bedecked with the governing party’s red, white and sky-blue colors. Tens of thousands of cheering people, largely mobilized by party operatives, greeted his arrival.
A day later, Mr. Kagame’s main challenger, Frank Habineza, arrived in the same town without a fanfare. His party’s colors — green, yellow and white — were absent from the now-busy streets. A few dozen people, many of them his own election workers, gathered under a tent by the street to listen to him. Security forces hovered nearby.
Two parallel Rwandas were on display on successive days in Byumba — a town of verdant, rolling valleys, 25 miles north of the capital, Kigali — showcasing how President Kagame is wielding the power of his decades-long incumbency in an election campaign in the Central African nation.
On Monday, more than nine million people are casting their ballots in a presidential and parliamentary election that analysts and rights groups say is a rubber-stamp vote with a foregone conclusion. Even though hundreds of candidates have registered to run for various seats, only Mr. Kagame’s face dots the landscapes of this hilly, landlocked nation of 14 million people.
Mr. Kagame, 66, who triumphed in the 2017 election with almost 99 percent of the vote, is expected to win a fourth term — extending his command over Rwanda since the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 people were slaughtered.
“Paul Kagame is a gift from God,” said Deborah Byukusenge, 24, a university student who arrived at the stadium in Byumba about 10 hours before the president.
Before Mr. Kagame’s speech, dozens of people at the rally fainted from the scorching heat and were carried away from the crowded stadium. Dozens were injured and one person died in a stampede at one of his rallies last month, according to authorities.
Ms. Byukusenge said she was a first-time voter and would vote for Mr. Kagame given everything she said he had done for Rwanda, citing improvements in health care and education, as well as uniting the nation after the genocide. “I don’t even take time to listen to the opposition,” she said.
Opposition members say they have been operating against the backdrop of severe restrictions and animosity toward their campaigns. In interviews, opposition party members say they have been threatened, harassed, beaten and detained without charges during the election season.
Mr. Habineza, who leads the opposition Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, said that officials in two districts organized campaigns for the governing party right next to them. Voters, he said, were ordered to go to the other rallies, and a shop that sold energy drinks to his staff members in one of the districts was fined about $40.
“They just don’t respect the law,” Mr. Habineza said in an interview.
The authorities have also ordered local leaders and business operators to collect contributions from residents and their staff and give them to the governing party’s campaign, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. One employee of a financial institution said he parted with 20 percent of his salary for three months.
Yolande Makolo, the government spokeswoman, said in a statement that “anyone with any concerns about breaches of laws or regulations” should report them to the election commission. She also said that organizing a rally next to another wasn’t against the regulations. The government, she added, “would encourage people to come forward if they have concerns.”
Mr. Kagame’s most strident detractors have also been blocked from running against him.
In addition to Mr. Habineza, the National Electoral Commission cleared Philippe Mpayimana, an independent candidate. But the commission blocked the candidacy of Diane Rwigara, an accountant and the daughter of a former Kagame ally, who was barred from the 2017 polls. A Rwandan court this year also upheld the election ban on Victoire Ingabire, a presidential hopeful previously convicted of terrorism and genocide denial in a case that rights groups said was deeply flawed.
During a recent visit, reporters noticed that the homes of both critics were being surveilled. Officials seated by the streetside used their phones to take photos of the vehicles and any person who entered the premises. Both Ms. Rwigara and Ms. Ingabire say their requests to leave Rwanda have been denied.
“We are so far away from being a democracy,” Ms. Ingabire said in an interview.
“If Kagame is so popular, he should not be afraid to be in competition,” she said.
The elections come as Rwanda confronts widespread opprobrium for backing rebels in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo in a brutal conflict that threatens to escalate into a full-blown regional war. Mr. Kagame’s government is also facing scrutiny over whether it should pay back hundreds of millions of dollars it received in a now-scrapped migration partnership with Britain.
The polls come as young people across the country grapple with unemployment and face arbitrary detention and abuse in so-called transit centers, according to activists and opposition figures. Thousands of families are also coping with extreme weather and the devastating impact of floods and landslides.
At his big rallies, Mr. Kagame has skirted around most of these urgent issues. Instead, in short, prosaic speeches, he has promised voters that the governing Rwandan Patriotic Front will continue its development agenda of building more roads and schools.
David Mucyo, a 22-year-old barbershop worker in Byumba who plans to vote for Mr. Kagame’s challenger, Mr. Habineza, said he hoped that development would reach the countryside, where many people still live in poverty. Even though he dreams of opening his own shop, he said prohibitive license fees and taxes obstruct many young people from getting into business.
“Development in Rwanda only benefits a few,” he said. “This needs to change.”
