In a correspondence addressed to William Benjamin Mkapa, Facilitator in the Burundian conflict on 12 December, the platform of the opposition parties-CNARED-GIRITEKA says it no longer recognizes Mkapa as a facilitator in the inter-Burundian dialogue process.
CENARED-GIRITEKA says “Mkapa has supported the violation of the Burundi constitution and the Arusha peace agreement by Pierre Nkurunziza.”
That opposition platform accuses Mkapa of ignoring the main cause of the crisis that Burundi has been going through since April 2015 and which is the raison d’être of the inter-Burundian dialogue. For CNARED, Mkapa has ended his mission as a facilitator.
On 9 December, before his departure following a three-day visit to Burundi, Mkapa said that the current Burundi government is legal and legitimate. “The legitimacy of President Pierre Nkurunziza should not be called into question, those who doubt it are out of their mind”, Mkapa said.
The current Burundi crisis has broken out since 26 April 2015, when the country’s ruling party CNDD-FDD nominated Pierre Nkurunziza as its candidate for the 2015 presidential election. The opposition and the civil society accused Pierre Nkurunziza of violating the Burundi Constitution and the Arusha Peace Agreement by running for a third controversial and unconstitutional term.
Since then, hundreds of Burundians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of others have been forced to flee the country according to different reports.
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