Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
An election official says President Paul Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party has won the majority of seats in parliamentary elections.
The head of the Rwandan Electoral Commission Kalisa Mbanda said late on Tuesday the election was free and fair even though human right groups said opposition parties not allied to the Kagame's RPF did not have fair conditions.
The RPF won 40 of the 53 seats open to political parties. Rwanda's lower house has 80 members but 27 seats are reserved for women, people with disabilities and youths.
Human Rights Watch said ahead of the vote, the outcome was "known before the polls."
Kagame is already into his second mandate and the next presidential elections are due in 2017, although there is already speculation over whether he may try to prolong his stay in office beyond that date.
Booming private sector
The small nation was left in ruins by the genocide of 1994, in which close to a million people, mostly from the ethnic Tutsi minority, were butchered by Hutu extremists.
It was Kagame's RPF, at the time a rebel army, which halted the killing, and the group has dominated the country ever since.
Rwanda has been transformed in the past two decades, with powerful economic growth, a booming private sector, the strangling of corruption and low crime rates credited to Kagame's strong rule. The World Bank now ranks the country as among the best places in Africa to do business. – Sapa-AP; AFP