By Hereward Holland
KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwandans voted in large numbers on Monday after a presidential election campaign that rights groups said was marred by repression and violence against critics of incumbent Paul Kagame, who is expected to win by a landslide.
Counting was under way and preliminary results were expected late on Monday. At one voting centre, Kagame won 98.8 percent of the vote, according to results posted outside, a Reuters witness said.
Kagame won the last election in 2003 -- the first since the 1994 genocide -- with 95 percent of the vote.
Analysts said the electorate was expected to again vote overwhelmingly for Kagame, partly because of the economic growth and stability he has delivered during his decade in power and also because of a crackdown on rivals and critics.
Kagame's three registered rivals are weak and linked closely to his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), they said. Three would-be candidates accused the government of preventing them from registering to contest the election.
Casting his ballot in Kiyovu, a wealthy suburb of the capital Kigali, Kagame said it was not his duty to create an opposition and said his focus would be to continue nurturing growth in the land-locked central African country if re-elected.
"We are already on a good footing and we want to attract more investment in the country and grow our trade with the region and beyond. I want to consolidate that and continue more growth," he told reporters at the Rugunga Primary School polling station.
Despite being land-locked and poor in resources, Rwanda is a rising star in Africa for donors and investors and Kagame has been feted as a visionary leader and African icon.
IMAGE REPAIR
While most of Rwanda's neighbours and donors are expected to be happy with a Kagame win, some analysts said the most dominant figure in post genocide Rwanda would likely have to repair his tainted image.
"Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front party face the difficult challenge of trying to repair their image, which has been dented by claims of growing political repression in the run-up to today's poll, said Gus Selassie, Africa analyst at IHS Global Insight, in a briefing note.
Voting across the land-locked country was peaceful, with some stations registering 100 percent turnout well before polls were due to close, National Electoral Commission Chairman Chrisilogue Karangwa told Reuters.
In at least one incident, however, voters were ushered into polling stations hours before voting officially opened and instructed to vote for Kagame.
"The first picture on the ballot sheet was Kagame. We were told to take their thumbs and show them where to vote. I know personally because I oversaw 83 people," said one man identifying himself as a village chief and RPF member.
A second man in the same village in Rwanda's Eastern province told Reuters he used a megaphone to order sleeping residents to vote: "Wake up, go to vote early, the one you have to vote for, you know him."
Anil Gayan, an African Union observer and former Mauritian minister of foreign affairs, told reporters: "I don't believe there was anything irregular with regard to the voting process that started on time."
Development and security were voters' main preoccupations.
"I think Kagame will win because he developed the country and brought security to the whole country," said Floridine Umurenge, a young unemployed mother of two, clutching a baby and her voter card.
Kagame assumed the presidency in 2000 but has been in de facto power since his rebel army swept to power and ended the slaughter of 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994.
The genocide was spawned, in part, by a surge of radical ethnic politics that followed the birth of multiparty democracy in the country in the early 1990s.
