Rather than taking clear steps to address human rights violations, in general government officials and CNDD-FDD members play down the threat that abuses such as those documented in this report might pose for the electoral process in 2010. For example, CNDD-FDD spokesperson Nduwimana reacted angrily to an International Crisis Group report published in August 2008 forewarning possible election violence; he told Human Rights Watch, “The risk is overstated.... Elections have always been peaceful in Burundi.”[250] In Ngozi, where CNDD-FDD representative Anthère Ntarundenga was killed in January 2009, the governor’s senior advisor (a CNDD-FDD member) told Human Rights Watch, “I don’t anticipate problems in the elections. No political party encourages violence; people don’t want to kill each other for political causes anymore.”[251] In fact, while voting itself proceeded smoothly in both elections in recent Burundian history—in 1993 and 2005—killings and acts of intimidation by armed partisans of various parties marked the 2005 election campaign, as well as the post-election period in both cases.[252]