Armand Giramahro, from the Amahoro Youth Club in Burundi, has provided the following update on the situation in his country:

The political situation here is very confused. There is a kind of cold war and nothing is certain about the future security of our country. Agathon Rwasa – the leader of the former armed rebellion – has gone into hiding and we only hear audio recordings in which he explains his concerns about his security and the security of members of his political party.

On the other hand, the election process is ongoing with six political groups taking part - CNDD-FDD which won the last elections, UPRONA, FRODEBU-NYAKURI (which claims to follow the example of Ndadaye, the former president killed in 1993), the PTP political party, and a coalition of about 5 smaller parties. These are the political parties in competition for the legislative elections.

Meanwhile, there is the ADC-IKIBIRI, the coalition of political parties that do not accept the results of the communal and presidential elections. They state that they will not accept the government of CNDD-FDD, nor any of its institutions. Among those parties, we find Agathon Rwasa’s party the FNL, the MSD whose leader is Alex Sinduhike - a former journalist, who is popular with young people especially in Bujumbura - the CNDD whose leader is Nyangoma - the founder of CNDD rebellion of 1994-1995 - and the UPD whose members are mostly Muslims.

The National Elections Commission has tried to begin dialog with this coalition, but their attempts have been in vain because this coalition argues that members of their political parties who have been arrested should be freed before dialog can take place. This is a very important issue because nowadays because there is are large numbers of politically motivated arrests and killings.

The only key I see to solve these problems is dialog, dialog and more dialog. I think that is what will prevent an other chaos in our country after about 16 years of civil war and genocide.

Now terrorists are knocking on the door. This does not sound good since we heard what they did in Uganda and we know now that they are not joking. Lets hope that we will not face this bad situation.

Armand Giramahro, Amahoro Youth Club, Burundi