Burundi’s new President Pierre Nkurunziza on Tuesday formed the country’s first government resulting from a political transition that ended last week aimed at reconciling majority Hutus and minority Tutsis.
The 20-member lineup includes seven women, with key posts going mainly to Nkurunziza’s National Council for the Defence of Democracy — Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
The naming of the new government caps a five-year peace process to end the tiny central African nation’s bloody 12-year civil war.
Under the power-sharing Constitution adopted in February the Cabinet can comprise no more than 60% Hutu and 40% Tutsi, and at least 30% women. The Hutus make up 85% of the population, and the Tutsis 14%.
On Monday the Parliament approved the president’s choices for vice-presidents.
Nkurunziza will lead Burundi for the next five years and has pledged to work for unity and national reconciliation as the country emerges from its long ethnically driven conflict in which some 300 000 people have been killed.
The war erupted in 1993 after the country’s first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, a member of the majority Hutu tribe, was assassinated by members of the minority Tutsi-dominated military. – Sapa-AFP