Burundi's ruling party wins every seat in poll as rivals say democracy 'killed'
NAIROBI — The ruling party in Burundi has won all 100 seats in a parliamentary election that the opposition says has "killed" democracy in the central African state.
Giving the provisional results for last week's poll, electoral commission head Prosper Ntahorwamiye said the CNDD-FDD party secured more than 96% of votes in all provinces.
The election had seen only "some minor irregularities", he added.
The opposition Uprona party came second with a little over 1% of the vote. The party denounced the election as rigged, with its leader Olivier Nkurunziza telling the AFP news agency: "We have killed democracy."
The main opposition party, the National Congress for Liberty (CNL), fell into third spot, getting only 0.6% of the vote.
Campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the result showed that democracy had been "hollowed out" in Burundi.
It added that the CNDD-FDD, in power since 2005, "sought to dismantle all meaningful opposition", including from its biggest rival, the CNL.
Freedom of expression is limited in Burundi and critics say these polls followed a prolonged campaign of intimidation and harassment.
Election observers from the Catholic Church were turned away from some polling centers, according to HRW.
The African Union meanwhile has been criticized for praising the "climate of freedom and transparency" of the polls, which it declared were "peaceful".
Correspondents say there was little sign of celebrations in the main city of Bujumbura after the provisional results were announced on Wednesday.
The electoral commission said the results would be submitted to the Constitutional Court, which has to then certify them and provide the final results by 20 June.
Ntahorwamiye said there were "some minor irregularities — shortcomings that came about which have been resolved — because as you know, nothing is completely perfect".
In line with the Arusha Accords that brought an end to the bitter Burundian civil war more than two decades ago, the ethnic composition of the country's parliament has to mirror the proportions of Hutus, Tutsis and Twa people in the population at large.
After this month's vote count, the electoral commission announced that an additional 11 seats were to be created and filled to remedy an imbalance — which will bring the total number of MPs to 111. — BBC
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Arab News
18-06-2025
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Use of US bunker-buster bomb looms over Iran conflict
WASHINGTON: A powerful American bunker-busting bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities, making it President Donald Trump's weapon of choice if he chooses to militarily back GBU-57, a 30,000-pound (13,607 kg) warhead capable of penetrating 200 feet (61 meters) underground before exploding, is missing from Israel's arsenal despite its stated goal of preventing Iran from building a nuclear less than a week, the Israeli army has taken out Iranian military commanders and damaged numerous surface installations, raising more questions than answers.'The regime's missile stockpiles, launchers, military bases, production facilities, nuclear scientists, military command and control has taken a very severe beating,' said Behnam Ben Taleblu, director of the Iran program at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a conservative-leaning group.'But there are still outsized questions as to how efficacious of a strike Israel had against the beating hearts of Iran's nuclear program,' Taleblu International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported no damage at Fordo, a uranium enrichment plant south of Tehran. Unlike the Natanz and Isfahan sites in central Iran, Fordo is buried deep underground, beyond the reach of Israeli bombs.'All eyes will be on Fordo, which is buried under about 300 feet of rock in central Iran,' Taleblu US Army lieutenant general and Rand Corporation defense researcher Mark Schwartz insists that 'only the United States has the conventional capacity' to destroy such a by 'conventional capacity,' he means the non-nuclear GBU-57 US military says the GBU-57 – also named Massive Ordnance Penetrator – 'is designed to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before exploding,' navigating through rock and differs from missiles or bombs that typically detonate their payload near or upon impact.'To defeat these deeply buried targets, these weapons need to be designed with rather thick casings of steel, hardened steel, to sort of punch through these layers of rock,' said Masao Dahlgren, a fellow working on missile defense for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based research 6.6-meter-long GBU-57 also has a specialized fuse because 'you need an explosive that's not going to immediately explode under that much shock and pressure,' Dahlgren for this bomb began in the early 2000s, and an order for 20 units was placed with Boeing in only aircraft capable of deploying the GBU-57 is an American B-2 Bomber, a stealth of these bombers were deployed in early May on Diego Garcia, the site of a joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean, but were no longer visible by mid-June, according to AFP's analysis of satellite imagery provided by Planet their long-range capabilities, B-2s departing from the United States 'are able to fly all the way to the Middle East to do bombing runs. That's been done before,' Dahlgren B-2 can carry two GBU-57 bombs, and Schwartz said multiple bombs will likely be needed.'They're not going to just be one and done,' he added that the air superiority Israel has established over Iran reduces the risks faced by the B-2 a US intervention would come with 'a lot of political baggage for America,' Taleblu said, emphasizing that the bunker-buster bomb is not the only way to address Iran's nuclear the GBU-57 bombs, and short of a diplomatic solution, Taleblu said Israelis could attack access to underground complexes like Fordo by 'trying to hit entrances, collapse what they can, cut electricity' and take other measures that have already been taken at Natanz.
