All Eyes on Burundi

Voters waiting peacefully for their turn to cast ballots at one polling station in Bujumbura, the capital.

Five years ago, Search for Common Ground launched Media Synergy in Burundi. Media Synergy is an initiative aimed at building a national media coalition to ensure accurate and professional coverage of elections, reduce misinformation, and contribute to the participatory and credible nature of the election process and its outcomes. Burundian media professionals most recently put Media Synergy to use during the communal elections, held on May 24, 2010. Sixteen media outlets, including  SFCG’s Studio Ijambo, participated in the media synergy for this round of elections.

The May 24th election was won by  President Pierre Nkurunziza’s CNDD-FDD party with 64% of the vote. Although national and international observers said the election had been peaceful and fair,  opposition parties accused the CNDD-FDD of fraud and announced they would boycott the presidential election set to be held today, June 28. This has left Nkurunziza, a former rebel, as the sole candidate.

Although oppostition leaders say they will not disrupt the polls with violence there is serious worry that this is exactly what will happen. Despite the best effort of initiatives like Media Synergy many fear the outcome of this election.  At the same time, a peaceful and transparent day could set an example for other countries in the region.

Media, and radio in particular, have been shown to play a powerful role in influencing political outcomes. In this excellent article from Foreign Policy Magazine, Jina Moore speaks to the delicate nature of Burundi’s election, the role of radio in the country and SFCG’s efforts to ensure that the role radio plays is a positive one:

“In a laudable (and rare) effort at impartiality, 15 radio stations pooled their journalists and airtime to provide unbiased nationwide coverage of the election in four languages, an effort dubbed Synergy. It was an attempt to avoid the problems of the 2005 election, when the media were more fragmented and vulnerable to political donors with deep pockets than they are five years later.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Another great article from TIME on the high-stakes elections.