The Hutu-Tutsi struggle for power in Burundi moved from the battle field to the ballot box yesterday, with hundreds of people lining up at polling stations before dawn to cast votes in a historic constitutional referendum.
Some 3.1 million people in this nation with a population estimated at 6 million have registered to vote in the referendum, which will determine the fate of a constitution that reserves 60 percent of seats in government and parliament for Hutus and 40 percent for Tutsis -- the current distribution under an interim constitution.
Until that interim charter, the Tutsi minority had dominated politics since Burundi's independence from Belgium in 1962.
If voters reject the proposed final constitution, the interim constitution will remain in force until elections are held for parliament this month and for president next month -- and the new government will then draft a constitution that will be submitted for another referendum.
The referendum and elections are part of a peace process intended to end Burundi's 11-year war between the army, dominated by the Tutsis, and rebels from the Hutu majority.
Pledge not to disrupt
The last holdout Hutu rebel group pledged not to disrupt the referendum, saying it hopes the new constitution will clear the way for the election of a new government with which it could negotiate a political settlement.
Voters will cast ballots at 2,100 polling stations. Polls opened at 6am and were to close at 4pm. Initial results will be released today and final results are expected to be published Friday, said Father Aster Kana, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
"I am here to cast my ballot and I will vote no because I don't know the contents of the constitution ... because officials did not make efforts to educate us on what is in the constitution," said Immaculate Sindayihebura, a Tutsi civil servant.
Eric Bigirumuhirwa, a Hutu soldier, said the most important thing for him was the significance of the vote, not the fact that he too didn't understand key details of the charter.
"This vote for me means we need get a constitution and a government of national unity that will work to end this war. And I will be able to rest after six years I have been fighting," Bigirumuhirwa said after casting his ballot, dressed in civilian clothing.
Dusk-to-dawn curfew
Authorities will enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew in one of Burundi's 17 provinces shortly after polls close to secure Bujumbura Rural Province as electoral workers count votes in the region where a holdout rebel group is still active, said Colonel Donatien Sindakira, minister for public security.
The curfew was to come into force at 6pm yesterday and ends at 6am today, Interior Minister Simon Nyandwi said.
Electoral officials said security officers in civilian clothing will protect polling stations. Officials at the UN mission in Burundi have said peacekeepers are on standby to help local security forces and will maintain a visible presence to assure Burundians that it is safe for them to vote.
The majority of 51 percent of votes cast is needed for the referendum to pass, electoral chief Paul Ngarambe said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.