Burundi has delayed again a referendum on a disputed Constitution to let the electoral commission register potential voters and gather key materials, including electoral cards and ballot boxes, the electoral chief said.
Burundians will vote in the referendum on December 22 instead of November 26, said Paul Ngarambe, head of the Independent Electoral Commission.
Burundi will begin to register voters on November 21 in a 10-day operation that will run past the original date for the referendum, Ngarambe said late on Wednesday.
”The ballot boxes, the indelible ink, polling booths and even electoral cards are not available — and even if we get them today, we would be late,” Ngarambe said.
The new Constitution will replace an interim charter that came into force on November 1 when the transitional law expired.
The transitional charter was part of a 2000 peace deal that brought together politicians from the minority Tutsi ethnic group and rebels from the Hutu majority. Tutsis have mostly controlled Burundi’s government and military since the country’s independence from Belgium in 1962.
The main Tutsi political parties have rejected the interim Constitution, saying it favours the Hutu at the expense of parties that represent Tutsis.
The political crisis led to the November 10 sacking of hard-line Tutsi vice-president Alphonse Kadege. President Domitien Ndayizeye accused him of undermining efforts to end the country’s 11-year-civil war by refusing to support the referendum.
The new charter divides power in the government and Parliament, giving 60% of seats to the majority Hutus and 40% to the minority Tutsis.
Tutsi-led parties want constitutional guarantees that the Tutsi share in the government will go to their parties, and not to Tutsi members of the Hutu-dominated parties expected to sweep legislative and presidential elections set for March and April respectively.
Civil war broke out in Burundi in October 1993 after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country’s first democratically elected leader, a Hutu.
More than 260 000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebel factions in the country of about six million people. — Sapa-AP