Complaints of irregularities as voter registration ends

Voter registration across Burundi ended on Tuesday amid complaints by political parties and civic society representatives that the exercise was marred by irregularities. Thousands of women, especially those in rural areas, were excluded from the registration because they lacked identity (ID) cards, an official of a women's human rights organisation said on Wednesday in a statement. "One out of every three women in rural areas does not have an identity card, this opens the way to exclusion," Mireille Niyonzima, the chairman of the Association pour la Defense des Droits des Femmes (ADDF), said. The ADDF, as well as several political parties, called for a new voter registration after a referendum on the country's post-transition constitution, scheduled for 22 December, to ensure greater coverage of potential voters to participate in general elections due to take place in April 2005. The National Independent Electoral Commission has not released the outcome of the registration, which began on 13 November. By Thursday, officials were still inputting the voters' data into the electoral commission's computers. Until late Tuesday, people in several neighbourhoods of the capital, Bujumbura, including Buyenzi, Cibitoke and Ngagara, were still queuing at registration centres even though the centres had closed. Early on Wednesday, many of the same people returned to the centres in another effort to register, but the centres were closed. The voter registration has been marked by delays. Many people had to first acquire ID cards and other identification documents from local administrative offices. Jerome Ndiho, the spokesman of Kaze-FDD, one of the former rebel movements, said the government had displayed negligence in its failure to issue new ID cards to the public. "For nine months, our party has been urging the government to distribute new IDs that cannot be forged. This, now, is the result - thousands have not been registered," Ndiho said. Prior to registration, the electoral commission allowed Burundians to present driving licences, passports, baptism cards or any document to prove their nationality. However, several political parties and civic society groups criticised the scheme, as such documents do not specify the nationality of the bearer. In a statement issued on Monday, Charles Nditije, the deputy chairman of the Union pour le Progres National, a Tutsi-dominated party, denounced what he called "massive and systematic fraud, especially in Bujumbura". Nditije said that registration sometimes occurred in "unknown places," sometimes during the night. He said there was illegal registration of people aged less than 18 years, of foreigners and of people bearing documents that did not prove their nationality. He alleged that in Rohero neighbourhood in Bujumbura a local government official went to a registration centre with "a list of 138 people to register without any supporting documents". Nditije said his party would lodge a complaint with the electoral commission, seeking to have such irregular registrations nullified. Niyonzima also proposed that the electoral commission should organise another voter registration before general elections in 2005. However, the electoral commission has stated that the voter registration, which ended on Tuesday, would suffice for all forthcoming elections. A population census is due to be conducted in December, on a date yet to be decided, in preparation for legislative elections scheduled for March 2005.