The first government of the new president burundian, Evariste Nadyishimiye, elected on May 20, was announced on Sunday evening June 28. It is a tight team of fifteen members and dominated by the hardliners of the regime.
The appointment to the post of Prime Minister, on June 23, of the highest ranking officer of the Burundian police, Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, had set the tone. Bunyoni was already considered the real number two of the regime since the political crisis of 2015 and the leader of the hardliners among the group of generals from the rebellion who control Burundian power.
Another hawk enters government: General Gervais Ndirakobuca, who until now has headed the much-feared National Intelligence Service (SNR), accused of being at the heart of the Burundian repressive system. He was appointed Minister of the Interior, Community Development and Public Security. It was during the Burundian civil war (300,000 dead between 1993 and 2006) that he acquired his nickname, Ndakugarika, literally “I am going to extend you stiff dead” in Kirundi. Mr. Ndirakobuca has been subject to sanctions from the United States, the European Union and the main European countries for five years.
In addition, Ambassador Albert Shingiro, permanent representative of Burundi to the United Nations for five years and considered the main “Diplomatic face” of Burundian power, becomes the new Minister for Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation.
The candidacy in April 2015 for a controversial third term of President Pierre Nkurunziza, who died on June 8, had plunged the country into a major political crisis that has killed at least 1,200 people and forced some 400,000 Burundians into exile. The country has since been held by an iron fist by the regime thanks to the SNR and the Imbonerakure, the ruling party’s youth league, the CNDD-FDD, which are sowing terror in the population.
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