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Burundi"s
President Pierre Nkurunziza speaks during a news conference in Bujumbura,
Burundi, May 17, 2015. Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
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Burundi officials will discuss their response on
Tuesday to a call by African nations to delay a presidential election by two
weeks to July 30, a presidential spokesman said.
Burundi was plunged into its worst crisis since the end of a
civil war in 2005 after President Pierre Nkurunziza announced in April that he
would run for a third term in office, a move opponents and protesters say is
unconstitutional.
Reuters report continues:
The president, whose CNDD-FDD party was declared winner of
last month's parliamentary poll that was boycotted by the opposition, cites a
court ruling saying he can run.
Regional African states meeting in Tanzania on Monday called
for the July 15 presidential poll to be delayed to allow Ugandan President
Yoweri Museveni to mediate. They also urged steps including disarming youth
groups linked to political parties.
"We are meeting today to consider a reaction,"
presidential spokesman Gervais Abayeho told Reuters, saying the meeting would
include government officials and the CENI election commission.
He did not give a time or say if the government was
considering delaying the vote. He said the meeting would be held once the
foreign minister returned from Tanzania on Tuesday.
The government has yet to issue a response to the meeting of
the East African Community (EAC), whose member states are Burundi, Uganda,
Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda. South Africa, which helped broker the 2005 peace
deal, also attended.
CENI President Pierre Claver Ndayicariye said provisional
results of the parliamentary election on June 29 gave CNDD-FDD 77 percent of
the vote, giving it another sweeping majority in the 121-seat parliament. The
last assembly has 106 seats.
Opposition coalition Amizero y'abarundi, which includes the
party of opposition figure Agathon Rwasa, secured 21 percent. The opposition
boycotted the vote and said they would not take up their seats, but the
election committee said they would count their votes as the name was on the
ballot.
U.N. monitors declared the vote unfair, while European and
African states did not send monitors as they said conditions were not right for
a free election.
Nkurunziza's election bid triggered weeks of protests, often
involving clashes between demonstrators and police. Dozens of people were
killed.
More than 140,000 people have fled Burundi fearing a return
of ethnic-fuelled violence experienced in the 12-year civil war that pitted
rebel groups of the majority Hutus, one of them led by Nkurunziza, against
minority Tutsis, who then led the army.
The conflict ended with the Arusha accords, named after the
Tanzanian city where they were brokered. The deal established ethnic quotas in
institutions and other steps to restore order.
The president's opponents say he is threatening that pact,
which sets a two-term limit, by seeking a third term.
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