The chaotic start to the electoral season in Burundi is unlikely to have a significant impact on a series of elections across the region over the next two years, election and political analysts say.

This is in spite of the fact that the governance question — that is, restrictions to presidential term limits — at the heart of the crisis in Burundi is similar in a number of countries where elections are planned.

If next month’s presidential elections in Burundi are not postponed, as is likely to happen, they will be followed by Tanzania in October and Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo in February and November next year, respectively.

Kenya and Rwanda will follow thereafter — in March and August 2017, respectively. And if things will have cooled in Juba, South Sudan could close the season with its own in 2018.

DRC is the noted exception, where a similar turn of events as in Bujumbura is expected because it presents a “more precarious case” than most, according to Dr David Kiwuwa, who has researched the politics of term limits in Africa.

READ: Kinshasa rocked in third day of protests over election law

As he sees it, while the tenure debate in, say, Uganda, continues to bubble, it is no longer as bitterly contentious as the authenticity of the electoral process, which appears unlikely to spark spirited public protests even if it remains a perennial ground for disagreement.

In Rwanda, the political gravitas President Paul Kagame commands, the tight way in which he is said to control the military, the ruthlessness with which he reportedly handles his competitors, the significant international political goodwill he can still draw on and the absence of an influential voice such as the Catholic Church in stoking mass defiance, as it did in Burundi, means there is likely to be no significant hurdle to the extension of his presidency if he chooses to continue.

Already, the public mood about President Kagame’s potential continued tenure is systematically and steadily being tested and gauged through open debate, which is unprecedented in the country, and a stream of petitions to parliament demanding an amendment to the Constitution to scrap term limits. He has presided over Rwanda for 21 years — first as vice-president for six years after the 1994 genocide.    

READ: Rwandans set the ball rolling in campaign to extend Kagame’s rule

In the DRC, however, “President Joseph Kabila’s intentions are bound to occasion violence,” noted Dr Kiwuwa, an associate professor of international studies at the University of Nottingham. “The civil society there is generally fragmented, some of which is clearly sympathetic to the opposition.

“Mass mobilisation that will set pro- and anti-government elements at loggerheads is almost inevitable.

“The tight military command too is not certain, especially given the contentious issues at play. Military cohesion was bound to hold last time around, given the fact that Kabila was still entitled to run for elections, but there is no guarantee that it will hold this time in the same way Burundi’s unravelled in the face of escalating violence and determined mass protest.”

Protests broke out in the capital Kinshasa in January after the government proposed a census ahead of the 2016 polls. The plan was widely interpreted as a ploy to delay elections in order to smuggle in a third term for President Kabila, who remains ambiguous about whether he will respect his two-term limit or not.