BUJUMBURA September 14th (ABP) – The Chairman of the Independent National Election Commission (CENI), Dr. Pierre Claver Kazihise met on Friday September 11, 2020, the election partners to assess the progress of the recent election process with a view to improving the electoral process next scheduled for 2025 and 2027, a check on the site by the ABP has revealed.
The CENI Chairman Pierre Claver Kazihise said that in general the election process went well despite some observations that need improvement. He affirmed that it is the positive result of the sensitization and training sessions on civic and election education that the CENI held for all the election partners during the preparation of the elections that the August 24th. He added that thanks to that civic and election training, the participation rate in the elections is satisfactory.
According to Mr. Kazihise, that meeting was organized in order to review together how certain activities took place and if there were any shortcomings or criticisms in relation to those activities to be able to say so that in the next election preparations they can hold account of those insufficiencies there and the reforms which they proposed are better conducted in the next elections than those one.
He added that when the election process is finished, it gives the opportunity to start the election process that follows and that is the reason for that evaluation. That will effectively make it possible to know how things happened in order to be able to correct in time and initiate the necessary reforms which are at the level of regulations, human resources logistics, in other words in all areas of the election administration so that we can prepare a better election process.
Participants in turn reported on some of the challenges they encountered and irregularities that they observed in the conduct of the election process. They also suggested that there are articles of the constitution and the election code that require reformulation. With that, they cited the example of co-opting deputies from the Twa ethnic group instead of belonging to political parties and competing like so many others.
Note that the election partners that the CENI met were the leaders of political parties, coalitions of political parties, independents, civil society organizations, religious denominations, the media as well as certain diplomatic missions accredited to Burundi who participated in the elections.