BUJUMBURA, February 11th (ABP) – The Chairman of the Independent National Election Commission (CENI), Prosper Ntahorwamiye, held a press briefing on Friday, February 7, 2025 in Bujumbura, during which he called on all Burundians who were registered for the 2025 elections to check, from February 10 to 12, 2025, whether they were correctly registered on the provisional election lists.
Ntahorwamiye said that these provisional election lists of voters are to be posted at the former voter registration offices.
“The voter registration work was carried out in two stages: manual registration in registers that were subsequently sent to the data processing center in Bujumbura, and computer entry. Human work can always have gaps. That is why we are planning a second period of posting the provisional election lists,” he explained. The president of the CENI spoke about some particularities relating to the registration of voters. “There will be omission forms: if by chance we forgot to register someone, there will also be correction forms. There will also be forms for deletion: if you find that someone does not meet the conditions, you can ask to remove them from the list. There will also be opposition forms against an appeal for deletion: when you file a complaint, you have the right to defense; if you are asked to remove a person from the list, the latter has the right to defense. There will also be a form for transfer: people are mobile; one can be registered at place X, but at the time of the elections, they can end up in another place for various reasons,” said Ntahorwamiye, adding that there will also be a form for statistics.
The chair of the CENI indicated that after the correction, the final list of voters will be produced as well as the voter cards so that they can respond to the elections of June 2025. Afterwards, he said, they will assign voters by polling station.
Concerning this period of verification of voter registration errors, Ntahorwamiye estimated that three days are sufficient. “For someone who has the good will to do the verification in the village where he was registered, they can be impeded on the first day, but not on the 2nd or 3rd day. Even if it can happen, the reason would not be related to the time which is not enough,” he said, calling on all Burundians to adjust so that this national activity is crowned with success.
Concerning the question relating to possible cases of loss of receipts, the chairman of the CENI reassured that there will be a sincere verification. “If someone has lost their receipt and is on the provisional election list, there will be no problem. If someone does not have a receipt and is not on the provisional election list, we will have a check in our registers and in our voter registration certificates to see if the individual was registered during the voter registration period,” he said.
All in all, Ntahorwamiye pointed out that the error verification only concerns people who were registered during the voter registration period. “This is not a reopening of voter registration,” he said.