Burundi polls to test stability

2005-06-01 20:43

Bujumbura - Just over a decade since Burundi plunged into bloody ethnic turmoil, voters in this tiny central African nation head to the polls this week for local elections seen as a key test of stability.

In a country long riven by tribal rivalry between minority Tutsis and majority Hutus, Friday's election of municipal councillors - the first in a series of polls - would be a bellwether for the prospects of concluding a five-year-old peace process.

Astere Kana, a Catholic priest and spokesperson for Burundi's National Independent Electoral Commission said: "The hour of truth has come."

Friday's voting would mark the first time Burundians elect their own leaders since the start of the 1993 civil war between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels that had claimed 300 000 lives.

Power-sharing constitution

It would also be the country's first exercise in democracy since the overwhelming approval in a February referendum of a power-sharing constitution, a hallmark of the Arusha peace process now signed on to by all, but one of Burundi's seven Hutu rebel groups.

Just two days before the campaign for Friday's elections began on May 18, the lone remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL) and Bujumbura signed a truce intended to lead to formal peace talks.

But, the FNL, which was accused of launching several post-truce attacks, would sit the polls out.

With the ethnic divide particularly pronounced in the countryside, where the vast majority of Burundi's seven million people lived, the choices of the rural peasantry on Friday were perhaps the most important in a series of five elections to be held by August 19 to end an extended transition period.

More than 3.4 million registered voters in 129 constituencies were expected to cast ballots for candidates from 31 political parties, including six former rebel armies, and 19 independents.

Real contest between Hutu parties

The winners of Friday's elections would on July 29 choose members of the Senate, who, along with members of the national assembly elected in July 4 legislative polls, would select a new president.

But, analysts said the real contest would be between the dominant Hutu parties: President Domitien Ndayizeye's Front for Democracy in Burundi and its chief rival, the ex-rebel Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD).

Since independence from Belgium in 1962, Burundi's politics had been dominated by the Tutsis, who accounted for only 14% of the total population, but the power-sharing constitution had altered the equation.

Charles Ndayiziga, head of Burundi's Centre for Conflict Prevention and Resolution said: "Right from the start, this looks like a duel for supremacy among the Hutus."

He said: "Whoever wins the municipals will be on the presidential path in August", noting the FDD's antipathy toward Ndayizeye, whose plans to extend the transition until August it publicly opposed.

- AFP