Burundi legislative elections were held as scheduled on July 23, 2010 and were the third of a series of five polls to take place in the country from May to September 2010. Seven political parties and two independents took part in the July 23 poll in which Burundians were called to elect 100 representatives.
Some of the opposition parties that had boycotted the electoral process following the May 24 communal elections chose to participate in this poll. The UPRONA party (Unité pour le Progrès National), for example, participated. It is regrettable that other parties did not participate. To provide some background, the opposition parties called for a boycott of the polls after the very first elections, the Communal elections that were held on May 24. The communal elections were followed by high political tensions between the ruling party CNDD-FDD (Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démoratie- Forces de Défense de la Démocratie) and the opposition parties, which are still contesting the results and that saw some of their members withdraw from the electoral process. Because most opposition parties chose not to participate in the legislative poll, the contest was essentially between only two political parties the CNNDD-FDD and UPRONA.
According to various observers, the July 23 poll was conducted in a calm atmosphere and in many visited polling stations, logistic and technical aspects were satisfactory even if some problems were noticed in certain places: use of government vehicles for political meetings; lack of verification of the indelible ink on the voters’ finger; reluctance of the CENI (the electoral commission) to immediately publish results, post them in open places and distribute copies to representatives of political parties.
During Election Day, the security forces behaved positively in general, constantly stressing the importance of preventing any act of violence, show neutrality and acting in conformity with laws.
On Tuesday, July 27, 2010, the President of the CENI called a meeting with various stakeholders in Burundi to announce the preliminary results of the legislative elections. Final results now have to be validated by the President of the Constitutional Court as prescribed by the Constitution.
So far, of the 100 seats to be filled in the Parliament, the results are as follows:
The CNDD won 81 seats (81.19%), followed by UPRONA with 17 seats (11.60%) and Sahwanya FRODEBU Nyakuri with 5 seats (5.88%).
There are six additional seats to end with a total of 106. The six supplementary seats were given to minority populations as mandated by Burundi’s Constitution. The idea is to integrate these ethnic groups and women into the political process. Of these three “co-opted” seats, three were given to the Batwa minority and the three others were split between the Hutus and Tutsis.
Among those 106 deputies, there are 34 women, 33 of them elected and only 1 co-opted. This shows a marked improvement in the political standing of women as in 2005, 14 seats had to be co-opted to women in order to reach the 30% quota for gender balance.
Out of the 17 provinces, there are 2 provinces where all the seats were won by the ruling party. Those are Bubanza (4 seats) and Ruyigi(5 seats).
The turnout rate for legislative elections was 66.68% as out of 3.551.125 potential electors, 2.367.926 showed up to cast their votes. That rate is by far lower than the one registered for the Communal elections where it was 90.67%.