Johannesburg - The African Union (AU) says it will not send election observers to the upcoming elections in Burundi unless conditions exist for a peaceful, credible and participatory poll.
The AU’s Commissioner for Political Affairs, Aisha Laraba Abdullahi, made this clear at the AU’s summit taking place in Johannesburg. Heads of state and government are gathering for the high-level component of the summit which begins on Saturday.
Not sending election observers would be a sign of disapproval from the AU.
However, Abdullahi would not be drawn on whether President Pierre Nkurunziza would have to back off his bid for a third term in order to satisfy the AU’s conditions for acceptable elections.
She said the crisis in Burundi sparked by Nkurunziza’s third-term bid – including bloody street protests and an aborted coup last month – would be discussed at the summit. But she said she did not want to pre-empt the outcome of the summit.
However, she agreed that in general, presidents seeking to change their constitutions to bid for third terms was a major cause of concern and instability on the continent.
Analysts have expressed concerns that the leaders of both Congos and of Rwanda seem to be manouevering to extend their terms in office despite two term limits.
There has been no indication from the summit so far about how it intends to address the general problem.
Abdullahi recalled the events in Burkina Faso last year when the AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma had clearly stated her opposition to longtime president Blaise Compaore changing his country’s constitution to bid for another term in office.
Abdullahi said that one of the problems the AU faced in trying to address the problem of “third termism” as some officials have dubbed it, was that there were grey areas in some countries’s constitutions.
She suggested that countries should reform their constitutions to remove these grey areas and clarify the obligations of the constitution. This seemed to be a reference to Nkurunziza’s argument that he has not in fact served two presidential terms since 2005 because he was not directly elected by universal franchise but indirectly, by Parliament for his first term from 2005 to 2010.
ANA