BURUNDI

Burundi looks like becoming yet another African country to go pear-shaped. The starting point, as so often in cases like this, is a constitution that limits the President to two 5-year terms. The problem is that the current President's first term started when he was elected by Parliament and not by a popular vote. The question then becomes "does he get that term, plus possibly two more, or is that first term one of the two?". Naturally the President (and his cronies) wants to stay on for as long as possible.

That question was put to the Constitutional Court, who ruled in favour of the first interpretation. However, it is a sign of trouble when one of the judges, who was against that ruling, fled the country, citing political pressure and fearing for his life. More importantly, a large section of the population and the army thought that the second interpretation was the correct one. Dissident officers staged a coup while the President was away in Tanzania. The coup failed, and the officers have been jailed. Some reports suggest they have been tortured.

This has all the beginnings of a renewed civil war. Does the rest of the world care? They didn't in next door Rwanda, and the result was a genocide. Could it happen again? I am not saying it will, but it is certainly possible.

Walter Blotscher