Burundi has announced a timetable for parliamentary and presidential elections, which have been postponed over the political unrest in the African country.

Gervais Abayeho, a spokesman for Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza, said on Wednesday that a decree signed on Tuesday night delayed the presidential election from June 26 to July 15 and the legislative polls from June 5 to June 29.

The parliamentary votes were originally scheduled to be held on May 26.

Abayeho also stressed that there will be no further delays to the election calendar.

Opposition leader Charles Nditije, however, accused Nkurunziza of organizing the polls without negotiations with his opponents, adding that that the elections would be a "masquerade.”

Over the past weeks, the Burundian government has been under pressure to postpone the polls amid the political unrest in the violence-wracked Central African state.

The chaos broke out late April after the National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy, which is the ruling party in Burundi and known by its French acronym, CNDD-FDD, designated the incumbent president as its candidate for the next presidential election.

Opposition groups say Nkurunziza’s bid for a third consecutive term in office is against the country’s constitution and a 2006 peace deal that ended 13 years of civil war. They also argue that the current electoral commission panel lacks the authority as two of its five regular members are said to have fled the country.

Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader from the majority Hutu tribe, has been in power for two terms since 2005.

In October 1993, Melchior Ndadaye, the first democratically-elected president of Burundi was assassinated after only 100 days in office, leading to deadly ethnic violence between the Hutu majority and minority Tutsis. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the African nation's civil war that ended in 2006.

SSM/HMV/GHN