The Chairman of RPF-Inkotanyi, H.E Paul Kagame has urged cadres, especially those in positions of leadership, to embrace the core values of the party in everything they do, to be able to serve the people better.
He said this on Thursday while opening the Congress of the RPF-Inkotanyi, which was held at the headquarters in Rusororo bringing together over 2000 delegates from within and outside the country.
The three-day Congress is being held as part of the activities to celebrate 30 years since the creation of RPF-Inkotanyi.
“You have to think of yourself as a leader who puts those you serve first; a leader who thinks about how to work with their peers. Not a leader who put themselves first. Those are not our values,” he told the cadres.
Without these values to guide them, he said any accomplishment is meaningless, values that are premised on the ideology that the people’s interest override personal ones and he gave an example to illustrate his point.
“Those who strayed, put personal interests above the core values of the RPF allowed themselves to be used by external forces who never wanted us to move forward and be who we deserve to be,” he said.
Knowing their weaknesses, external forces used praises. They told them they were better than the ones they fought with, better than their fellow Rwandans and they went from being leaders to being tools of external forces, he said.
These former cadres, he said, have ended up being used and dumped with these very detractors.
On the 30 years of RPF-Inkotanyi existence, the Chairman said that it is a milestone not only of years, but of efforts that changed the course of history of Rwanda as well as our character.
He said that citizens expect the leaders of RPF-Inkotanyi to succeed without fail. “To deliver on development, for their children to go to school, for citizens to earn a livelihood. We cannot afford to fail our citizens.”
The Chairman cautioned cadres against the culture of bragging about what others can learn from Rwanda and RPF in particular again saying that these are not the values that the party stands for.
On the establishment of the political organisation, he said that RPF emerged as a response to serious problems in Rwanda, caused by bad politics, problems that included a divided country with no direction, where citizens had no rights, dignity or even a sense of security.
The Congress will be concluded on Saturday with the election of the RPF National Executive Committee that is made up of the Chairman, Vice Chairman, the Secretary General and Commissioners.
