By Julius Bizimungu, Kigali RWANDA
It caught many by surprise when it was announced this week
that Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza had passed on. The Burundian
government said in a statement that he had succumbed to a cardiac arrest.Pierre Nkurunziza
Nkurunziza
had attended a volleyball match on Saturday but started feeling unwell soon
after and was rushed to hospital when his condition deteriorated, according to
the statement.
It was at the same facility,
the Fiftieth Anniversary Hospital in Karuzi, that he breathed his last on
Monday evening. His death was announced on Tuesday.
Nkurunziza, 55, is survived by
a wife, Denise Bucumi Nkurunziza with whom they have five children.
By the time of his death, the wife had been
admitted at a hospital in Nairobi, where she was evacuated recently, over an
unknown condition.
According to reports from Burundi, the Speaker of
Parliament, Pascal Nyabenda will be sworn in as interim president, pending the
swearing in of Maj. Gen Evariste Ndayishimiye, who was elected in a
Presidential election held on May 20 this year.
According to Burundian
journalist Teddy Mazina, the Burundian constitution stipulates that Nyabenda
takes over, pending the swearing in of the President-Elect Ndayishimiye, which
is expected to take place on August 20.
Ndayishimiye is also the Secretary
General of the ruling party CNDD/FDD.
“The president-elect cannot be
sworn in now because, legally, he is supposed to be installed 90 days upon his
election and any attempt to take the presidency earlier would amount to a
coup-d’état,” Mazina, who is also a human rights activist said.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a
political analyst based in Rwanda, suggests Nkurunziza’s departure is most
likely be a continuity of his party’s leadership.
“CNDD-FDD won the elections.
So there is a degree of continuity there,” he says.
What may change, he adds, will depend on the inclinations
of the new President.
Whether Burundi can heal from the turbulent leadership
under Nkurunziza, Golooba says will depend on whether the new President shares
aspirations and ideological orientation with Nkurunziza.
Ndayishimiye, who is also the Secretary-General of the
ruling Conseil National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie–Forces pour la Défense
de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD), garnered 68 per cent of the total votes with
his nearest rival Agathon Rwasa placed second with 24 per cent.
“This is a kind of victory to all the victims of
Nkurunziza’s leadership who have been saying ‘you are not a good president, we
have economic problems, corruption problems, health problems’ that came as a
result of his leadership,” he told this publication in a phone interview.
He was referring to unconfirmed reports that Nkurunziza
could have succumbed to Covid-19, which different Burundian officials have
denied.
If Nkurunziza died of Coronavirus, Mazina says, it is because
he didn’t put in place minimum health measures and guidelines, as well as
awareness and educational programmes for the population to combat the global
pandemic.
“Every country considered the virus as a pandemic and put
in place the right measures and deployed all science measures, but Nkurunziza
downgraded all the global efforts and went ahead to allow mass gatherings,” he
notes.
Lonzen Rugira, a Rwandan political analyst, believes that
the exit of Nkurunziza from the political landscape could give a maneuvering
chance to the next president to set an agenda and open relations with
neighbors.
“It’s a good opportunity for Burundi to hit a restart
button,” he says.
He argues that Nkurunziza’s presence was always going to
overshadow the new President, who has always been the former’s protégé.
“The fact that he’s out of the picture could give an
opportunity to the President to set an agenda that is less divisive, that is
much more cooperative with the neighbours and open to the international
community,” he notes.
This would mean that people may start to return to the
country after seeing that there is a new direction that the country is taking.
Rugira however, indicates that there might be rupture at the elite level where the opposition could gain more prominence, but if there is consolidation among the political elites then the country will return to normalcy.
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