BUJUMBURA, October 17th (ABP) – The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) organized a meeting for its partners in Bujumbura on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, to present the national directory of Voter Registration Centers (CI), the electoral calendar and voter registration for the 2025 elections.
The Chairman of CENI, Prosper Ntahorwamiye, told the press that the main aim of the meeting was to inform the public of these important events, and to ask everyone involved to prepare accordingly.
The meeting also aimed to raise awareness among administrative staff of the need to facilitate the issuance of the documents required for voter registration, and to encourage the population to respond en masse to the voter registration process. Voter enrolment will take place from October 22 to October 31, 2024, said the Chairman of CENI. He pointed out that the CI is located in an infrastructure and bears the name of the infrastructure that houses it. It consists of two or more registration offices. The registration office is housed in a registration center and constitutes the registration unit.
There are 4246 CIs, divided into 15633 registration offices, while the total number of supervisors to be recruited is 1 per CI, said Ntahorwamiye.
The Chairman of CENI also specified that elections for deputies and communal councils would take place on the same day, i.e. June 5, 2025; those for senators on July 23, 2025; while elections for village/neighbourhood councils and chiefs would be held on August 25, 2025.
For the 2025 Senate, there will only be 13 senators, including 10 elected and 3 co-opted Twa. For the National Assembly of 2025, there will be 103 deputies, including 100 elected and 3 co-opted Twa, added Ntahorwamiye. For his part, Théophile Ndarufatiye, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry in charge of the Interior, asked territorial administrators to take ownership of all the activities planned for the 2025 elections. He assured the audience that the Ministry of the Interior, in collaboration with CENI, was planning awareness-raising sessions to inform them of their role during the electoral period.
Ndarufatiye took the opportunity to ask the leaders of political parties to demonstrate their patriotic spirit by sensitizing their militants to good behaviour during the electoral period, so that none of their members would be guilty of any breach, either through ignorance or disobedience.
As for certain concerns raised by participants at the meeting in relation to the 2025 elections, the Chairman of CENI pointed out that with dialogue, nothing is impossible. He asked those concerned to comply with the electoral calendar by providing them with all the necessary documents to enter the competition.
To this end, he appealed to all Burundian citizens to turn out en masse for the 2025 elections. Lastly, he encouraged all those who were going to file their candidacy for the election, while asking them to accept the results that would emerge from these elections.
The meeting was attended by the wife of the late President Pierre Nkurunziza, Members of Parliament and Senators, the representative of the Ministry of the Interior, representatives of the Presidency of the Republic, the representative of the Vice-President of the Republic, the representative of the Prime Minister’s Office, and representatives of the diplomatic and consular corps. Also present were organizations from the United Nations system, commissioners from CENI, and representatives from various ministries, senior executives and state officials, representatives of governors and administrators, representatives of political parties registered in Burundi, representatives of civil society and religious denominations, as well as representatives of various Batwa community associations.