Email the AU official who said election was free and fair
We should write to the Deputy Chair of the African Union, Mr Patrick Mazimhaka, CC to his boss Mr Alpha Oumar Konare, to complain about his biased comment on the VOA. According to him there was no question that the opposition organised the June 8th protests. He added that the elections were free and fair. This is a very biased comment which is not backed by evidence. His comments were not only offensive but calls into question AU's neutrality. While the Ethiopian government has found it hard to link the opposition with the spotaneous protests, the AU official makes serious allegations without a shred of evidence. Even Meles never dared to say the elections were free and fair...but here is an AU official, who might have personal ties with the PM, he declared that the elections were free and fair. This is undeplomatic and deeply offensive. He has already tarnished the forthcoming AU report. Let us show him our anger!
Patrick Kayumbu Mazimhaka was elected the Deputy Vice Chairperson of the African Union Commission at the Second Ordinary Session of the African Union in July 2003 held in Maputo, Mozambique.
Patrick Mazimhaka was raised and educated in Uganda, having left Rwanda as a young boy during the aftermath of the 1959 Rwanda 'revolution', which witnessed a large exodus of Rwandan refugees to Uganda.
It was while in Canada, that Patrick Mazimhaka came into contact with Rwandans in the Diaspora who were determined to return to their homeland in Rwanda. He soon became deeply involved in the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) activities, which had been founded to launch a struggle against the Rwandan government that had denied citizens the right to return to their homeland. When the RPF launched an armed war on 1st October 1990 against the Rwandan government, Mazimhaka was appointed RPF's Commissioner for External Relations. He was later elected the Vice-Chairman of RPF in 1993, a position he held until 1998.
Patrick Mazimhaka was appointed the Minister of Youth, Sports and Cooperatives in the RPF government in 1995, one year after the RPF had ousted the regime of Juvenile Habyarimana in April 1994. He held this portfolio until 1996, when he was made Minister of Rehabilitation and Social Affairs. A year later he was appointed Minister in the Office of the President until 2000, when he was made a Special Envoy of the President.
