Me Philippe Lardinois, auteur du livre : Paul Kagame, un de Gaule Africain

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Me Philippe Lardinois, auteur du livre : Paul Kagame, un de Gaule Africain. Parcours similaire entre le General De Gaule et Paul Kagame.   Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/IgiheTV Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/igihe and  https://twitter.com/igihetv IG: https://www.instagram.com/igiheofficial/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/www.igihe.tv/ Visit our website: http://igihe.com/

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00:00 [Music]

00:08 I am a lawyer by training, I am of Belgian nationality.

00:12 I am generally interested in questions of law and political philosophy.

00:18 I am a fervent admirer of General de Gaulle,

00:23 and so I read his writings, I read a lot of things about him.

00:27 And at one point, as I was interested in the history of Rwanda,

00:33 and certainly of the new Rwanda,

00:35 I considered that there was a certain parallel,

00:40 a certain possible comparison between President Paul Kagame and General de Gaulle.

00:48 And so I started to think about this comparison,

00:53 and then gradually I realized that it was going the right way,

00:57 and so I started writing this book on these two characters.

01:02 [Music]

01:05 One and the other will first reveal themselves as providential men

01:10 in particularly difficult situations.

01:14 De Gaulle is the man of June 18, the man who, from June 18 to 1940,

01:19 when he refuses the capitulation of France in the face of defeat by the Nazi troops.

01:28 And so he leaves France, he goes to London, he creates Free France.

01:33 So he is someone we did not know, who was not very well known,

01:36 and who at one point said, "No, France cannot capitulate, it must rise up."

01:42 And so he creates Free France.

01:44 And this period will last four years, since from June 18, 1940 to the victory,

01:51 to De Gaulle's return in July 1944 in Paris,

01:56 he will be the man of the refusal of the renunciation.

02:00 Well, we have a similar period with Paul Kagame,

02:04 who after the beginning of the war, on October 1, 1990,

02:10 will be called to the front and will take back the troops of the FPR,

02:19 which were in difficulty, and this period will also last four years,

02:23 until the victory in July 1994.

02:27 And so we have the two men who, in very difficult situations,

02:31 will reveal themselves, be real leaders,

02:36 people who decide not to abdicate, not to say no.

02:40 And then you have the second period.

02:42 With De Gaulle, it starts in May 1958, when he returns to power,

02:49 because France is in difficulty, it is stuck in the Algerian crisis,

02:57 Algeria wants independence, France does not want to abandon French Algeria.

03:02 And so De Gaulle returns to power, and he will remain in power for ten years,

03:07 until 1969, and during this period he will change the institutions

03:14 by creating the Fifth Republic.

03:16 And so he will reveal himself as a providential and remarkable politician,

03:22 since the institutions created, set up by General De Gaulle in 1958,

03:28 are still there today.

03:30 And on the other hand, Paul Kagame, who was a soldier,

03:34 will reveal himself as a great politician,

03:38 he will become vice-president, then president of the Republic,

03:42 and he will allow Rwanda to rebuild after the disaster of the Etutsi genocide in 1994.

03:55 The echoes I had of the Rwandans, which I know,

04:01 were very favorable and positive.

04:06 I could read on social networks, some who said,

04:10 "Yes, but again we compare an African, a Western, a European,

04:16 and Paul Kagame is not a De Gaulle African."

04:20 I think I was misunderstood. I don't want to assimilate Paul Kagame to De Gaulle.

04:27 My approach is to say that there is in both men a similar fate and approach

04:35 that allows them to emerge in exceptional situations.

04:40 I think it is useful when we write a book of this type

04:48 to meet people who disagree with the new Rwanda.

04:58 Philippe Rentiers is one of them.

05:02 I also spoke about Philippe Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch.

05:09 I think it is necessary to meet the arguments of those who disagree.

05:22 The criticism of the new Rwanda is always based on the crime

05:32 or the criteria of what we call individual human rights.

05:39 I think it is a mistake.

05:42 I am wrong in my approach.

05:46 Democracy is first of all

05:51 to make work together two poles,

05:58 the collective and the individual.

06:02 The general interest, the interest of all, and fundamental freedoms.

06:10 In my opinion, the general interest, the interest of all,

06:22 is above the individual interest.

06:26 I think that today, in countries like Rwanda,

06:31 the collective pole is first of all passed before the individual pole.

06:36 This seems to me to be coherent.

06:39 When you come to Rwanda for a long period,

06:43 the first time I came was in 2001,

06:46 and I came back very regularly.

06:49 I think I did not count, but at least a dozen times.

06:55 We are still struck by the positive evolution of the country,

06:59 to see that the country is developing,

07:02 by the good manifest governance.

07:05 I also speak with Rwandans,

07:08 I made friends among Rwandans,

07:11 and not important people, ordinary Rwandans.

07:16 When I talk with them,

07:20 they show that they are satisfied, that they are happy with this new Rwanda,

07:27 and that especially the oldest,

07:30 who can compare it with what existed before,

07:35 there is no doubt.

07:37 The new Rwanda is much more,

07:40 how to say,

07:44 a Rwanda that cares much more about the interests of its citizens than the previous regime.

07:53 General de Gaulle, when he was President of the French Republic,

07:59 in the 1960s,

08:02 Alain Perfit, who is his Minister of Information,

08:05 asks him, but it would be necessary to allow the opposition to express itself on the radio, etc.

08:12 And General de Gaulle answers, with a slap in the face,

08:15 "Why do you want there to be an opposition?

08:18 It is not an ideal to be in the opposition."

08:21 This is to show that this question was already presented in the 1960s.

08:26 I would say that the opposition itself is not an ideal.

08:29 The opposition is interesting from the moment it is constructive,

08:34 where we come up with ideas, projects, proposals for improvement.

08:39 If it is simply to say, "We do not agree because of this or that,"

08:43 often in relation to relatively anecdotal things,

08:47 in relation to what has been achieved, it is without interest.

08:50 The great challenge of the new Rwanda is its youth.

08:57 I think I no longer have the numbers in mind,

09:01 but the majority of the Rwandan population was born after 1994.

09:08 It is through this youth that we must give a future.

09:13 The world has changed since 1994,

09:17 with the Internet revolution, with the establishment of the Gafas, etc.

09:22 All this changes the situation.

09:27 The world is a planetary village.

09:30 You can, from Kigali, be in contact almost instantly

09:35 with people who are on the other side of the world.

09:39 You can be informed.

09:41 I can give you my address in Brussels.

09:43 You can type on Google Earth and you can see the house where I live.

09:48 It was unimaginable 25 years ago.

09:51 I think that this youth, which has been shaken up,

09:55 which lives in it,

09:57 is waiting for the country to allow it to express itself at all levels,

10:05 to be able to realize itself in the context of this new world

10:11 that has appeared since the 2000s.

10:14 www.globalonenessproject.org

10:17 [Music]

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