This archive report was first published on 13 June 2020.
On June 13, 2020, the Burundian Constitutional Court announced that Evariste Ndayishimiye, the president-elect, would be sworn in as soon as possible following the death of President Pierre Nkurunziza.
Ndayishimiye, who won the May 20 presidential poll, was expected to take over the presidency from Nkurunziza in August when Nkurunziza's term ends.
However, Nkurunziza's sudden death due to a heart attack on Monday created a possibility that the speaker of the Burundian National Assembly, Pascal Nyabenda, could become an interim leader before the swearing-in of Ndayishimiye in line with the Constitution.
But the Constitutional Court, in a statement, said that the vacancy created by Nkurunziza's death meant that the purpose of an interim president disappeared, as a president-elect already existed.
According to the Constitution, the term of the president shall begin on the day on which he is sworn in and end on the day when his successor takes office.
On June 4, the Constitutional Court had upheld the provisional results of the presidential election, declaring Ndayishimiye of the ruling party the winner by securing 68.70 percent of votes.
Ndayishimiye will serve a seven-year term in office and can renew the term once.
He was born in 1968 in central Burundi's Gitega province and held several senior positions in the government before being elected as Secretary General of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) in 2016.
