The newly elected members of Burundi’s National Assembly and Senate began work on Thursday to prepare for the election next week of the country’s first post-transitional president.
Before the August 19 vote, almost certain to elect former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza as head of state, the two chambers must agree on parliamentary rules of procedure, which will then be considered by the Constitutional Court.
As members of the two Houses met in separate sessions, the president of the national election board, which oversaw a series of polls easily won by Nkurunziza’s Forces for the Defense of Democracy, appealed for them to work quickly.
”I urge the legislators who will elect Burundi’s first post-transitional president to rapidly adopt the rules of order and offices to ensure the credibility of our country and our future,” Paul Ngarambe said in a televised message.
Nkurunziza is the only candidate for the presidency, as current President Domitien Ndayizeye opted not to run after his Front for Democracy in Burundi party, another Hutu group, lost badly in local and legislative polls.
His expected August 26 swearing-in will mark the end of an extended, regionally endorsed transitional period and peace process aimed a securing a comprehensive settlement to Burundi’s 12-year ethnically driven war.
About 300 000 lives were lost in the fighting that erupted in 1993 after the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, a Hutu, between the Hutu majority (85%) and the Tutsi minority (14%), which dominated the military.
Under the terms of the country’s new power-sharing Constitution, overwhelmingly approved in a February referendum, representation in the legislature and government is to be split between the two groups.
To meet that requirement, as well as others guaranteeing gender equity and representation for the Twa pygmy tribe, the election board added 10 seats to the 34-member Senate and 18 seats to the 100-member National Assembly. — Sapa-AFP