Burundi registers lowest voter turn out in three decades

Polls closed in Burundi’s controversial elections on Tuesday with officials saying that voter turnout was smaller than expected but provisional results are expected within two days.

Opponents accuse Burundi president Pierre Nkurunziza of violating the constitution by seeking another five years in office. Nkurunziza, almost sure to win given the opposition boycott, cites a court ruling saying he can run again.

Western donors and African states, worried about tensions in a region with a history of ethnic conflict, urged Burundi to postpone the poll. The United States and Europe have halted some aid to Burundi, one of the world’s poorest nations.

Electoral commission officials led party agents in counting ballots cast while separating those of Nkurunziza and opposition party leaders whose names appeared on the ballot papers even if they had boycotted the exercise.

The electoral commission said opposition names were still on the ballots and any votes for them would be counted.

Burundi has been grappling with its worst crisis since the end of the civil war, which pitted rebel groups of the ethnic Hutu majority, including one led by Nkurunziza, against the army, led at the time by the Tutsi minority.

Electoral commission chief Pierre Claver Ndayicariye told Reuters provisional results could be announced in two days. He said turnout could be 80 percent in rural areas but was unlikely to exceed 40 percent in the capital, the scene of protests.

“We will be able to announce the provisional results within two days because tomorrow on 22 of July we will deploy a team of staff which will collect the envelopes in which we have the minutes of the results for each polling station,” said Ndayicariye.

More than 170,000 Burundians have fled the nation of 10 million to refugee camps in Tanzania, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Opponents say the president’s re-election bid undermines a peace deal that ended a civil war between rebel groups of the Hutu majority and the army, led then by the Tutsi minority.

The tension worries neighbouring Rwanda, which has the same ethnic mix and suffered a genocide in 1994 that killed 800,000, mostly Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus.