Burundi’s second vice-president resigned on Tuesday, blaming official corruption and human rights abuses for derailing promising progress toward peace in the Central African nation.
Alice Nzomukunda, who was the second-ranking government official from Burundi’s ruling party, told reporters in the capital she could not ”remain indifferent” to troubling developments in the country, which had been tasting peace after 12 years of civil war.
”My decision was motivated by numerous political problems which Burundian people are undergoing — problems of security, of not respecting the law, the management of state finances and of human rights laws which are violated,” Nzomukunda said.
”The country was on a good path to overcome all these problems, but corruption and economic embezzlement are undermining it,” she added. President Pierre Nkurunziza took office a year ago on a wave of optimism sparked by his ascension under a United Nations-backed plan to end years of ethnic violence set off by the 1993 assassination of Burundi’s first democratically elected Hutu president.
The coffee- and tea-growing nation of seven million has suffered from cycles of ethnic slaughter between majority Hutus and the dominant Tutsi minority since independence from Belgium in 1962.
Nzomukunda held the second-highest government post accorded the majority Hutu ethnic group under a power-sharing deal with the minority Tutsis who long held Burundi’s levers of power.
But allegations of corruption, which the former Hutu rebel leader Nkurunziza had promised to wipe out, and human rights abuses have clouded what had been viewed as a homegrown African success story.
Recently Western diplomats have criticised Burundi’s government, now in its second year in power, for its handling of an alleged coup plot in which a half-dozen suspects — including former President Domitien Ndayizeye — have been arrested.
Burundi says it has evidence of the coup plot, and dismisses complaints by human rights watchdogs that it is cracking down on free expression through a spate of arrests of opposition, civil rights and anti-corruption activists since May.
A government spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Nzomukunda blamed Hussein Radjabu, chairman of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, for the turmoil.
”We urge the international community to continue supporting Burundi and not punish it because of the actions of one person, Hussein Radjabu,” Nzomukunda said.
Diplomats and analysts say Radjabu wields enormous influence through his control of the finances and intelligence arm of the CNDD-FDD, a former Hutu rebel group. He could not immediately be reached for comment. – Reuters