The crisis in Burundi started in April of 2015 when the President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, decided to stand for a third term in office. The problem that everyone had with him standing for a third term is that in their constitution mandates that a president can serve only two terms max.
This was the first indicator that he was becoming an authoritarian leader, as he demonstrates “rejection of democratic rules of the game” (Ziblatt and Levitsky, 2018) by purposely violating the constitution.
Protest broke out all around the country following the news. The protest started off peaceful, but quickly turned violent. Citizens took to the streets willing to risk their lives to oppose Nkurunziza’s third term. The protests were solely political. The citizens of Burundi realize what Nkurunziza is trying to do so they all came together attempting to stop him before it webt too far.
Within a month of Nkurunziza’s decision to stand, the Army General Niyombare declared that President Nkurunziza had been “relieved of his duties” by a coup. (Matfess, 2015). There are some people that argue the coup was Nkurunziza’s idea so he had justification to for cracking down on everything. Although the coup ended up being a failed attempt, Nkurunziza came back into power and slide further into authoritarianism.
The main qualities of an authoritarian leader are denial of legitimacy of political opponents, tolerating or encouraging violence and readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Each one of these qualities alone are enough to say that a leader is authoritarian.
With Nkurunziza’s return to Burundi, came reports of a suppression on independent Burundian media (Matfess, 2015). He also heavy targeted opposition strongholds and civil society representatives (Siegle, 2015). These are some more indicators of an authoritarian leader. By targeting the opposition strongholds, he is denying the legitimacy of political opponents. In doing so he sends out a call for violence.
According to Vdem.net, the government censorship effort increased sharply leading up to the election and the amount of parties on the ballot decreased. The government put strict rules on the media leading to less of a chance for the opposing party to get their information out to the masses.
After announcing his standing for a third term President Nkurunziza went to the constitutional court to do some convincing. The court’s seven judges were placed under enormous pressure and received death threats from political elites to approve Nkurunziza’s campaign (Matfess, 2015). This shows the corruption that started to happen within the counties roots.
President Nkurunziza was then re-elected in July despite the claims of lack of credibility by many outside countries and institutions including the US, the European union and the UN. This was not a free and fair election as the opposition party boycotted the elections, leaving Nkurunziza with basically no competition. Looking at a graph of the level of democracy in Burundi there is a noticeable decline in the democracy starting the year Nkurunziza was first elected in 2005
The protest did not get any better after he was elected, in fact it got worse. There were thousands of people involved and several killed during the protests. The People were out raged and almost returned to civil war. However, the catholic church intervened and calmed the crowd before it could get that far. Other political institutions in Burundi such as the UNHCR also stepped in to voice concerns about the violence that was taking place.
Nkurunziza is willing to do anything to hold his position in power. The reason he might want to remain in power is to control the countries monopolies, natural resources and land. However, he has made poor economic decisions through his presidency leaving his country in deep poverty. Burundi is considered to be one of the poorest countries in the world.
According to Przeworski and Limongi’s theories, a democratic country experiencing a declining economy is less likely to survive. So, there is no surprise that the democracy in Burundi eroded. However, this is just one of the reasons for the fall of their democracy.
The most ironic thing of It all is the party that supported President Nkurunziza was the CNDD-FDD or the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy. What makes this so ironic is that their party stands for the defense of democracy, however ever since the start of Nkurunziza’s presidency there has been a decline in the level of democracy to the point that it is now.
Work sited
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Crown, 2018.
Joseph Siegle December 10, 2015. “The Political and Security Crises in Burundi.” Africa Center for Strategic Studies, africacenter.org/spotlight/the-political-and-security-crises-in-burundi/.
Matfess, Hilary, et al. “The Tragic Death of Democracy in Burundi.” The National Interest, The Center for the National Interest, nationalinterest.org/feature/the-tragic-death-democracy-burundi-12927.
https://www.v-dem.net/en/analysis/CountryGraph/
In my opinion, what happened in Burundi is typical of many developing countries. Burundi’s economy is based generally off of natural resources and only a few of them bring in the majority of the country’s revenue. When democratic developing countries rely on a sole resource for their economy it creates a perfect environment for corruption. The economy and country ends up being run by a few rich elites who can manipulate the government and country with their money, which is exactly what happened in Burundi. Nkurunziza and his third term is a tipping point for this country. What takes place after this is integral for the future of their democracy. If the opposing parties are able to rise up and successfully perform a coup, there is no guarantee that those people will implement a responsible democracy. or if they will take the chance to corrupt the government even more. On the other hand, if Nkurunziza serves his full term, what will happen next? If he continues to run term after term he will further his authoritarian rule eventually destroying any form of democracy that Burundi had.
Hello, this analysis is very impactful for the definition of democratic erosion. From the articles I read, democracy still had a hold of the nation, but the article you chose demonstrates what we were discussing, but there is something different. In this sense, it appears that the people want to fight for democracy. In the beginning, it stated that the President of Burundi wanted to run for a third election year and that the people did not want this because by law, a person can only run for two office terms. Democracy is eroding at a pace where most people will not notice until it is too late, but I believe this is a prime example of those that want to fight to keep the notion of democracy alive and real. There are values that only democracy can offer and the people of Burundi realize that. In this case, the one eroding democracy is the government itself, instead of the people. In a way, this is the worse of both scenarios because he already has control over the people to a certain extent. But I do have a question regarding the protests, is there statistical evidence of how violent the protests have become over the course of the election period compared to when he is already in power?