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Party fights for Nkurunziza to run

Saturday April 05 2014

Confusion reigns in Burundi following the ruling party’s insistence that President Pierre Nkurunziza will vie for a third term in next year’s election despite parliament’s rejection of his bid.

Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana said that although Parliament voted to preserve the Constitutional two-term limit, President Nkurunziza will still vie.

“There are people who want to believe that the question of another term is closed…That is not true,” said Mr Nduwimana.

The ruling CNDD-FDD failed to marshal enough support in Parliament on March 21, to change the Constitution. Opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary session as they felt the amendments would have undermined reconciliation agreements that ended the country’s long ethnic-based civil war that saw 300,000 people killed.

READ: Burundi puts on hold debate on president’s term

The government wanted to create a post of prime minister and reduce the role of the senate in overseeing the ethnic balance in State institutions but it fell one vote short of the required 80 per cent majority.

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Last week, Burundians in the diaspora held demonstrations to protest attempts by President Nkurunziza to change the Constitution and vie for a third term.

The protests were held in Toronto, Canada Washington DC, USA and Brussels, Belgium where a meeting of European Union and African leaders was going on.

They called on President Nkurunziza’s government to stop political violence in the country and release all political prisoners. They said his regime should respect the law and freedoms provided for in the Constitution.

Burundi’s current basic law, which dates back to the end of the civil war, says the President can serve two directly-elected terms. A separate clause says the first post-war leader will be indirectly elected by lawmakers — as President Nkurunziza went on to be.

Under the planned changes, the latter clause was to be deleted allowing the President to run again.

According to Burundi’s laws, the failure means the changes can now only be re-introduced in parliament after a year, just months before the country’s elections slated for June next year.

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