Luxury cars, expensive homes, and the plundering of state assets have no place in a legitimate political class, the AFC/M23 movement has declared, as deputy coordinator Bertrand Bisimwa called for a fundamental rethinking of what success should look like in public life.
Bisimwa said the movement refuses to accept a system in which politicians accumulate greater personal wealth than ordinary citizens.
“We want to build a political class that pays for the country with its commitment and, if necessary, with its blood, not politicians who plunder the assets of the state,” he said.
He argued that wealth creators in the private sector should become the true models of success in society, surpassing politicians in public esteem.
This shift, he said, is a necessary condition for restoring trust between citizens and their leaders. As long as politicians remain the most visibly prosperous members of society, the population will continue to see those in power not as public servants but as oppressors.
“It is on this condition that our population will stop seeing leaders as executioners,” Bisimwa said.
He was direct in his rejection of the symbols of political excess, pointing to fine cars and expensive houses as evidence of a culture of self-enrichment that the AFC/M23 is determined to dismantle.
“Today, it is the politicians who have the finest cars, the finest houses. This, we refuse,” he said.