05/11/2024
Burundi : Even if it means committing a national genocide!
Évariste Ndayishimiye does not stop at anything.
Today, the survival of the Burundian citizen depends on his one and only voice, his vote. The decision is official : all rights, whatever they may be, are conditioned by enrollment in future elections. All, except the right to breathe, as long as one is still alive, of course. Except that this constraint is not dictated by any legal text. Because, to my knowledge, the National Assembly has never legislated on this matter. And even then, do Burundians really deserve to be subjected to a new ordeal that only aims to finish them off? (Analysis by Franck Kaze)
INFO SOS Médias Burundi
In everyday language, we say that "voting is a right, but also a civic and moral duty", but without the second assertion being subject to political constraint. It is certainly true that in some countries, such as Belgium, to name only the one best known to my compatriots, absence from elections is punishable by a fine. But this is more linked to the history of this country where at one point, business leaders refused to give their employees time to go and vote, thus causing absenteeism that worried public authorities. In Burundi, this decision to make voting compulsory is not supported by any legal text.
You vote, or you die! In a country where the right to life was already hanging by a thread, with the lack of almost everything, starting with water - in a country where it rains 9 months out of 12! _, electricity, fuel, sugar, food products whose exorbitant prices push the majority of Burundians to eat only once a day, and even then, etc., deciding to demand that to access the few basic necessities that are still available, one must show one's registration card, is simply saying to the citizen : "if you don't want to vote, well, commit su***de!".
As a result, the measure announced by the government has not established limits, each administration authority, at each level, with the collaboration of the young zealous Imbonerakure militiamen of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, goes there with their abuse : who prohibits access to public fountains, who prevents his people under his responsibility from buying the slightest drink, who blocks access to health structures or even to markets ..., everything goes, without a second thought or shame, as long as one does not show a clean pair of heels.
An act as criminal as it is useless. Évariste Ndayishimiye is putting the noose around the neck of a people already on their knees, Burundi having just been classified as the "hungriest country", following the paralysis of the agricultural sector due to lack of fertilizers, the inability to move within the country due to the longest fuel shortage the country has ever known, the impossibility of investing due to the lack of foreign currency and rampant corruption that has become endemic.
A situation resulting from a lack of a vision that should translate into clear policies in the economy, governance, justice, and all other sectors of the life of the nation, today devoid of any subsistence.
Évariste Ndayishimiye is brandishing an official death threat to a people already wounded by serious violations of their rights that he has perpetuated, even aggravated, since his accession to power, in particular by daily assassinations and kidnappings.
It is for these very reasons that Gitega has just suffered two scathing slaps, one after the other. Indeed, the government had not yet recovered from the renewal of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burundi, which was so criticized, that the European Union announced the renewal of its sanctions for one year. Two snubs that hit home, to the point of inciting Neva and his people to say to themselves : "we have nothing more to lose" and to take out their anger on the poor Burundian population. The act of voting by obligation is useless in itself for obvious reasons : first because the head of state and his team have set up a falsely national and independent electoral commission completely acquired to the party of the eagle, then because the political space is totally marked out, without the slightest margin of expression and action for an opposition which, despite a common vision of things through the acts of persecution it suffers, cannot unite to stand up. Moreover, the leader of the CNDD-FDD having publicly described his political party as a party-state, it is clear that the only place available is that of the ruling party which reigns without sharing and without embarrassment.
A massive vote for a massive theft
By its attitude, the power in place proves right its detractors who have always believed that the CNDD-FDD has never won the elections since 2010, and that the worst is yet to come with the next elections. Various actors including independent civil society and political organizations such as the new platform, the Coalition for the Renaissance of the Nation (CRN - Ingeri ya Rugamba) or the Movement for Patriotic Action (MAP Burundi Buhire), seeing things coming, quickly denounced what they called electoral farce, the CRN even going so far as to demand the pure and simple cancellation of these "shameful" elections.
Through this restrictive measure against the people, the government is reinforcing those who think that the CNDD-FDD is afraid, because Burundians, in their majority, have never had confidence in it, and is therefore seeking to legitimize itself by stealing as many votes as possible that will have supposedly acclaimed it. And for that, Évariste Ndayishimiye and the CNDD-FDD are ready to do anything, even if it means crucifying an entire people, if they dare to defy them. Poor us!
