Burundi Gets New President As Nkurunziza Retires

Burundi now has a new President in a general election held last week, marred with violence as well as health concerns over the deadly Coronavirus.

The new President of Burundi is now Evariste Ndayishimiye after winning 68.7 percent of the total votes counted in an election held on May 20, 2020.

His main rival was Agathon Rwasa who got 24.2 percent of the votes according to the results announced by the election commission on Monday.

Pierre Nkurunziza has been the President of Burundi for 15 years and his rule has always been characterized with corruption, murder, and detention of his rivals as well as massive corruption among officials in his government.

Burundi was criticized by the international community after the government decided to go ahead with elections as planned in the face of a global pandemic that is sweeping across the world.

The World Health Organization officials who questioned the move to have elections in the face of Covid-19 were ejected from the country, their offices shut down and declared persona non-crata.

Foreign observers were prevented from entering the country and monitoring the elections. The human rights groups such as Amnesty International criticized the government for violations of rights during the polls.

In other words, the government planned for a general election. supervised itself, and announced itself as the winner, a perfect example of a definition of democracy in Africa.

The new President Evariste Ndayishimiye is a former rebel leader and a retired army general. He served as secretary-general of the National Council for the Defense of Democracy Forces. He has also served as Nkurunziza’s envoy to countries such as Uganda, South Africa, China, and Russia.

Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world with some of the poorest health systems in the world with the government refusing to carry out Covid-19 tests.