Selim Mawad, Executive Director of the Sustainable Democracy Center – Lebanon, and independent consultant on dealing with the past and peacebuilding in the MENA and the Great Lakes Region The essay analyses the situation in Burundi two weeks after the parliamentary elections and a week prior to the presidential one, the time when the essay was written. Selim Mawad analyses the Burundian civil society and its activities in the run-up to the presidential elections. He develops a number of scenarios which he considered likely to unfold after the elections and explains how civil society failed to achieve its original goal of preventing the re-elected Pierre Nkurunziza from assuming a third mandate as President of Burundi.