Burundi president-elect to assume office 2 months early, court rules

Burundi’s top court has made a ruling aimed at ending the power vacuum created by the sudden death of President Pierre Nkurunziza on Monday.

The Constitutional Court said has that President-elect Evariste
Ndayishimiye should be sworn in as soon as possible.

Legally, the speaker of parliament, Pascal Nyabenda, should have
become the interim leader.

But the cabinet decided to refer to the court and now Mr
Ndayishimiye is due to become president two months early.

He was elected in May to replace President Nkurunziza, who had
been in power for 15 years.

Burundi’s top judges said that in the constitution the interim
period under the speaker of parliament was designed as a time to hold fresh
elections, but the president-elect’s recent victory made this unnecessary.

The ruling ends days of uncertainty about the succession in the
small East African country, reports the BBC’s senior Africa correspondent Anne
Soy.

Mr Nkurunziza had been able to run for a fourth term in last
month’s election but decided to retire and was to be known as the “supreme
guide to patriotism”.

The government said that he died on Monday of a cardiac arrest
after being taken ill on Saturday evening.

There have been numerous reports that Mr Nkurunziza died after
contracting coronavirus but these have not been confirmed.

SOS Médias Burundi, which is made up of exiled journalists,
quoted both a medical source and another close to the government as saying that
the late president had Covid-19.

The government has not responded to the reports.

Mr Nkurunziza appeared to downplay the pandemic several times.

In early March, before the country confirmed its first case, he
said that “God will protect us” from coronavirus, then just a week
before he died, he said “God has cleared [coronavirus] from Burundi’s
skies”.

The country has recorded just over 80 cases of the virus and
there has been one confirmed death.

Burundi is currently in a week-long period of national mourning
following Mr Nkurunziza’s death and the cabinet has suspended the playing of
secular music in public places during this time.

Officials say gospel music is still allowed.

Mr Nkurunziza was a born-again Christian.