Polling stations have opened in Burundi’s controversial presidential elections with Pierre Nkurunziza widely expected to win a third consecutive term.
Shortly before voting started on Tuesday, at least two people – a policeman and a civilian – were killed, according to witnesses, in a string of explosions and gunfire in the capital Bujumbura, the epicentre of three months of anti-government protests.
On Tuesday, Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa, reporting from Bujumbura, said that one of the opposition members was also killed overnight in the city’s Nyakabiga neighbourhood. The incident prompted a big crowd to gather there in protest in the morning.
The opposition have denounced the candidacy of the incumbent president as unconstitutional and a violation of the 2006 peace deal that ended a dozen years of civil war and ethnic massacres in 2006.
The nation’s constitutional court has ruled in the president’s favour, however, maintaining he is eligible for a third term because he was chosen by legislators – and not popularly elected – for his first term.
“Despite a facade of pluralism, this is an election with only one candidate, where Burundians already know the outcome,” said Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, a think-tank that has warned the situation has all the ingredients to kick-start a renewed civil war.
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