There was a specific purpose behind no doing stat rolls for RME. While rolling for stats may be fun, a number of folks also dislike that stats also influence DPs available. So, by giving static stats to assign, we could also control the number of DP, and thus make sure all the characters were equal in that regard, while still allowing for some flexibility.
Doing it this way also allowed us to avoid the entire issue of DPs based on stats. We did not have to explain how deriving DPs from stats worked and/or replace the core rules with an option. If you look at the stats given, you would end up with the same number of DP as we give (35).