Cibitoke : Voter registration entrusted only to CNDD-FDD members

The 2025 elections worry opposition political parties. In Cibitoke province (northwest Burundi), all census agents campaign for the CNDD-FDD, the ruling party. Opposition party leaders are crying foul. The provincial commission in charge of elections denies these allegations.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

According to opposition political party leaders, no census agent was chosen from among the candidates campaigning for other political parties. The task of voter registration was entrusted to members of the ruling party, the CNDD-FDD.

“All the applications of our party members were rejected. No one was selected,” laments a representative of an opposition political party in Cibitoke.

Electoral register

Some civil servants are concerned about the credibility of the electoral register. They believe that it could contain irregularities because fictitious people and those who have not yet reached the voting age could be included.

Opposition party activists, for their part, fear that the right to register could “be denied to us”. The governor of Cibitoke, Carême Bizoza reassured his subjects.

“All census agents have been asked to put aside their political affiliation and fulfill the mission entrusted to them in accordance with the law. Recalcitrants are exposed to serious sanctions,” he warned.

Cibitoke is part of the zones and regions of the new extended province of Bujumbura, according to the new administrative division taken into account in the legislative, senatorial, village and district elections of 2025. The provincial representative of the CENI (Independent National Electoral Commission) in this province reassures.

“Everything is happening transparently,” he declared.

The head of CEPI-Bujumbura also denies allegations that all census agents are members of the former Hutu rebellion only.

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CENI agents at a polling station in Burundi, May 2020 (SOS Médias Burundi)