{{President Pierre Nkurunziza will seek another (third) presidential term in the 2015 elections; Burundi’s Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana has announced complicating the third term debate further.}}
On Thursday last week, Nkurunziza’s ruling party was beaten in the national assembly after efforts to review the constitution failed to attract the required quorum of 85 votes but obtained only 84.
However, the country’s interior minister very loyal to president Nkurunziza has unilaterally announced that the president will be candidate in 2015.
President Nkurunziza has never publicly expressed intentions to seek third term as president of the east African nation which has had enough share of civil wars.
The rejection last week by the national assembly to review the country’s constitution has suddenly accelerated pro Nkurunziza announcements showing publicly that the party leader will seek another term in office in 2015.
{{Interior Minister says Constitutional Court must ” decide”}}
“What we are denouncing today is that there are people who want to believe that the issue of another term (for Nkurunziza) is closed. This is not true. My advice to politicians who will be the presidential candidates is to prepare knowing that they have in front of them to be the current president candidate. This will be the Constitutional Court to decide one way or another and Burundians must respect this decision , “said Edouard Nduwimana.
For the opposition party , the Union for National Progress ( UPRONA ) , the appeal to the Constitutional Court is a new attempt to ” force passage ” from the president.
According to Article 96 of the Constitution of March 2005, based on the Arusha Accords having helped end the civil war in Burundi ( 1993-2006) , the president ” is elected by direct universal suffrage for a term of five years renewable once . ”
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