Burundi: Prime Minister and Vice-President approved at full speed

Text by: RFI Follow

In Burundi, the National Assembly and the Senate approved this Tuesday, June 23, the candidates presented by President Evariste Ndayishimiye for the posts of Vice-President and Prime Minister: Prosper Bazombanza and Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni. Two faces well known in the country.

Publicity

Whether in the National Assembly which sits in Bujumbura, and in the Senate, which has its quarters in Gitega, many parliamentarians appeared this morning without knowing anything about the program that awaited them. Everything then went very quickly.

In the National Assembly, the President first read a letter to the deputies of the new head of state Evariste Ndayishimiye received yesterday evening, asking him to approve any "  emergency  " candidates for the vice-presidency and prime minister. The affair was therefore carried out smoothly, in the absence of opposition deputies who denounced "  an obscure and secret procedure  ".

Prosper, a now "symbolic" charge, which is vested in an elected representative of a different ethnicity and party than that of the head of state according to the 2018 Constitution, the choice fell on Prosper Bazombanza. This Tutsi from the Uprona party, who had first vice-president from 2014 to 2015, was approved almost unanimously.

A man of the seraglio

Everything went so quickly for the candidate Prime Minister, a position that did not exist until now. A signal ? The choice of General Evariste Ndayishimiye fell on a man of the seraglio, in business since 2005: the police commissioner general Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni. True n ° 2 of the regime and one of the pillars of the Burundian security system, he had been approached for the post of Prime Minister for months. "  President Evariste Ndayishimiye and his relatives were to give pledges to the hard wing of the group of generals from the CNDD-FDD party who hold the country with an iron  fist," said one of his executives.

But this choice is far from being unanimous even within the ruling party. In turn chief of police, minister of public security or head of the civilian cabinet to President Pierre Nkurunziza, "  Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni symbolizes in the eyes of many activists the corruption which is plaguing the CNDD-FDD system  ", explains one of 'them. The other generals had also obtained his head in 2014, before he returned in force in favor of the 2015 crisis in Burundi.

Burundian civil society in exile speaks of a "  very bad signal  " by pointing to its central role "  in the repressive machine  " put in place for five years. She also denounces "  a military stranglehold on all the cogs of power and a challenge to the international community  ", the new Prime Minister having been under the influence of American sanctions since 2015.

"A man of strength"

One of his supporters wanted to be reassuring. He acknowledges that the general police commissioner Bunyoni "  smells of sulfur, but he is a very organized man who knows how to be respected  ". "  He is a man of strength. His appointment could put an end to the dysfunctions that have always been observed at the highest summit of the State,  "added another.

The approval process was also expeditious in the Senate, where the two candidates were approved in a few minutes and unanimously this time. The two personalities will now meet in front of the Parliament this Tuesday morning at 9 am local time, where they will be sworn in in the presence of the President of Burundi and the Constitutional Court. The objective of this forced march? Put in place a government before the national funeral of former president Pierre Nkurunziza , scheduled in two days.

Newsletter Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Burundi
• Evariste Ndayishimiye