Burundi: There has never been a real democracy; there has been a shift from military coups to electoral coups.
After the monarchical system, Burundi experienced a succession of military powers, which people gained through coups d’Etat until the introduction of multiparty politics with the La Baule conference. The first three Presidents of the Republic, from the same region, followed one another without bloodshed.
Captain Michel Micombero is known for having overthrown the monarchy and for its indiscriminate repression in 1972, a year of bad memories for the Hutus who saw theirs coldly executed by the power of the day in response to an attack from Burundi and especially the south of the country by extremist Hutus, supported by mulelist elements who killed many Tutsis in the regions of Rumonge, Nyanza lac, Bururi and Makamba.
Burundians remember Colonel Jean Baptiste Bagaza as a man who initiated many development projects in Burundi. He will be dismissed after a misunderstanding with the Catholic Church (closure of churches and ban on prayer meetings).
Major Pierre Buyoya is the man of the Burundian Unit. A unity sung since 1991, but which has never been a reality in the daily lives of Burundians since its adoption. Just two years later, in 1993, when we entered a so-called pluralist system, extremist Hutus, who had long internalized the ideology of genocide and who had even been to the school of Juvénal Havyarimana of Rwanda, committed the irreparable by exterminating hundreds of thousands of Tutsis across the country. To cover up this genocide of the Tutsis long prepared by the Frodebu party, they called it “the little anger” (agashavu), following the assassination of their first democratically elected Hutu president. Democracy or ‘’ethnocracy’’? If democracy means “the voice of the majority”, it is about a majority around a project of society clearly explained and understood by the people. This is not an ethnic coalition to regain power and subsequently exterminate all those who are not of his ethnicity and / or his political party. But, this is exactly what France was aiming for by prematurely imposing this kind of democracy; a numerical majority which crushes a political minority to create chaos in our countries.
The powers that followed Melchior Ndadaye’s death lacked popular legitimacy. Weak powers, resulting from conventions, negotiations with a view to sharing positions of responsibility between the different protagonists. With the arrival of the cnddfdd through negotiations, politicians forced the 2005 election which was won by the cnddfdd in terror. Although the Burundians needed a change, it was found that the cnddfdd had been favoured (in violation of the law) to be accepted as a political party with the name cnddfdd. It still had branches throughout the country they had passed through during the war and its political mobilizers threatened the population to return to the bush if they did not vote for that party. This is how the cnddfdd was able to win these elections when it had no social project to present to the people. And it will be said that it was a democratic election.
The elections that followed (2010, 2015, 2020) were only pure electoral holdups, real coups d’état because won by those who had the physical strength on their side, that is to say the party in power. History will remember 2015, a year of serious violation of the law with the 3rd illegal and illegitimate mandate of the late Pierre Nkurunziza. Thousands of innocent people have died, others arrested and imprisoned, and others forced into exile. An unnamed beginning of a crisis which has serious repercussions on Burundi.
The 2020 elections? We don’t even talk about it. Never seen in the world. During the celebration of the 2nd anniversary of Agathon Rwasa’s CNL party on February 14, 2021, Valentine’s Day, Agathon Rwasa could not find words to describe the electoral theft to which he and his political party were victims. “The whole world knows how the elections went, and the CENI gave us second place,” he told a huge crowd of supporters. This is not to say openly that Evariste Ndayishimiye and his cnddfdd system used force to declare Ndayishimiye the winner of the elections when the people chose change, the people voted for the CNL. In spite of the cheating organized for a long time by the party in power, in spite of the harassment of the members of the CNL by the militia imbonerakure (prohibition to participate in the meetings), the counting of the results at the various polling stations showed the CNL victorious. It will be difficult for the CENI to count and declare the real results as it was forced to present the winning cnddfdd candidate. As the CNL leader said, everyone saw that there was cheating, but everyone kept silent. Even the Catholic bishops who released the election observation report did not have the courage to go through with it. They preferred to do like the others. And here is Ndayishimiye Evariste who calls himself president / relative of all Burundians after a shameless electoral theft. And it will be said that he was democratically elected. This would mean that democracy is limited to the simple act of going to vote. Respect for the popular verdict, the government of the people by the people and for the people are still far from our African countries and especially from Burundi where he who has physical strength imposes his laws.
URN HITAMWONEZA finds that it is time to reflect deeply on the effects of the democratic system imposed on us by the Westerners so that we can instead put in place an improved system adapted to the realities of our country; a democracy that leads us towards mutual respect, the fight for ideas and social projects in order to achieve the well-being and development of the country and the people as a whole.