Burundi ruling party wins all seats in legislative vote

Burundi's President Evariste Ndayishimiye casts his ballot during the Burundi legislative elections at Musama Primary School in Gitega on June 5, 2025. [AFP]

Burundi's veteran ruling party won every seat in last week's parliamentary elections, the electoral commission said Wednesday, in a vote critics and observers say was tainted by irregularities.

"Nationally, the CNDD-FDD came first with 96.51 percent of the vote," election commission chief Prosper Ntahorwamiye said in a live televised ceremony.

None of the other parties obtained two percent of the votes -- the constitutional threshold to sit in the National Assembly -- "so all 100 seats go to the CNDD-FDD," he added.

The final results of last Thursday's poll are due to be announced by the Constitutional Council on June 20.

Members of the National Congress for Liberty (CNL), which came third with 0.6 percent of the vote, alleged multiple and forced voting, as well as "banned access" and the "arbitrary imprisonment" of its observers.

Anicet Niyonkuru, a legislative candidate and leader of the smaller opposition Council of Patriots party, told AFP that voters put pre-filled ballots in the ballot box, calling it "a major fraud that was seen everywhere".

Olivier Nkurunziza, the leader of the Uprona opposition party which received just 1.38 percent of the vote, said the elections were "rigged".

The Uprona party "denounces rigged elections", Nkurunziza told AFP, adding: "We have killed democracy."

He said the CNDD-FDD had won 100 percent of the vote in some districts, with no invalid ballots, abstentions or absentees, despite Uprona fielding at least 50 candidates in each area.

Journalists and voters who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons also told AFP of significant irregularities.

Poverty 

President Evariste Ndayishimiye took power in June 2020 after the death of his predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza, who had ruled Burundi with an iron fist for 15 years.

Since taking office, he has swung between gestures of openness and a firm grip on power, with rights abuses denounced by NGOs and the UN.

His party, the CNDD-FDD, was accused of hobbling its main adversary the CNL, which came second in the last elections in 2020. At the time, the CNL called the vote a "farce".

In 2023, Burundi's interior minister suspended the CNL citing "irregularities" in the way it organised its meetings.

In 2024, Agathon Rwasa, a former militia leader, was replaced as head of the CNL by Nestor Girukwishaka, who is said to be close to the ruling party.

Burundi ranks as the world's poorest country in GDP per capita, according to the World Bank’s 2023 index, with 75 percent of its 12 million people living below the poverty line.

One Burundian analyst, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, told AFP the country is facing "a very deep socio-economic crisis marked by all sorts of shortages, galloping inflation of more than 40 percent a month and increasing public discontent".

Burundi has been paralysed notably by a severe petrol shortage for nearly three years.