Burundi's ruling party – which has been in power since 2005 – won all the seats in the 5 June legislative elections the country's electoral commission announced, as government opponents decried what they say was a rigged ballot.
"Nationally, the CNDD-FDD came first, with 96.51 percent of the vote," election commission chief Prosper Ntahorwamiye said in a live televised ceremony.
"As none of the other parties obtained 2 percent of the vote, the constitutionally stipulated threshold for taking seats in the National Assembly, a total of 100 seats go to the CNDD-FDD party," he added.
The Constitutional Council is due to announce the final results on 20 June.
Olivier Nkurunziza, secretary-general of the Uprona party, which officially obtained 1.38 percent of the vote, told French news agency AFP: "Democracy has been killed. Uprona denounces rigged elections."
In some constituencies, claimed Nkurunziza, the CNDD-FDD won 100 percent of the votes – with no invalid votes, no abstentions and no absentees. "Even though in all the communes there were at least 50 candidate members," he added.
On polling day, members of the National Council for Freedom (CNL), the ruling party's main opponent, denounced multiple voting and forced voting. It claimed its observers had been hunted down and arbitrarily imprisoned.
Anicet Niyonkuru, a legislative candidate and president of the Conseil des Patriotes, a small opposition party, told AFP that voters placed ballot papers that had already been filled in. "It was a major form of cheating that was observed everywhere."
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'A farce'
President Evariste Ndayishimiye took power in Burundi in June 2020 after the death of his predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza (no relation to Olivier Nkurunziza), who had ruled the country for 15 years.
Since taking office, he has swung between gestures of openness and a firm grip on power, with rights abuses denounced by NGOs and the United Nations.
His party, the CNDD-FDD, is accused of obstructing its main opponent, the CNL, which came second in the last elections in 2020. At the time, the CNL described the elections as "a farce".
In 2023, the Burundian Ministry of the Interior suspended the CNL, citing "irregularities" in the way it organised its meetings.
In 2024, Agathon Rwasa – a former Hutu rebel leader who fought against the army, which was then dominated by the Tutsi minority, during the civil war that claimed some 300,000 lives between 1993 and 2005 – was ousted as head of the CNL and replaced by Nestor Girukwishaka, who is reputed to be close to the ruling party.
Burundi is the poorest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita, according to a 2023 World Bank ranking. Nine million of its 12 million inhabitants live below the poverty line, and the country has been paralysed by a petrol shortage for almost three years.
One Burundian analyst, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, told AFP the country is facing "a very deep socio-economic crisis marked by all sorts of shortages, galloping inflation of more than 40 percent a month and increasing public discontent".
(with AFP)
