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PDFGiven Burundi’s political impasse and following the EU’s denunciation of the country’s discouraging human rights record, Nancy Welch revisits Burundi’s predicament and the challenges facing the country’s opposition political parties.
Following turbulent general elections in 2010, Burundi has inched ever closer to a slippery slope of conflict that defined years past and left the once-ethnically polarized country on its knees. While some observers considered the 2010 elections to represent a breakthrough in Burundi’s political evolution, a rather different narrative presents itself when considering the conduct following the elections of Burundi’s political parties. As described in the EU’s 2010 electoral observation final report, Burundi’s political parties faced internal divisions, lacked financial resources, and suffered indiscipline prior to the elections. Since the elections, those debilities have grown, particularly among Burundi’s opposition parties, and now threaten to jeopardize their legitimacy and permanence, and in turn, undermine the practice of multiparty politics in Burundi more generally.
Of Burundi’s 44 registered political parties, seven opposition parties won seats in the May 2010 communal elections, the process and results of which several of Burundi’s main opposition parties disputed. 12 such parties formed the Alliance of Democrats for Change (ADC-Ikibiri), which boycotted subsequent legislative and presidential elections, allowing the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) and opposition party National Unity and Progress Party (UPRONA) to win the majority of legislative seats. Incumbent President Nkurunziza won a virtually uncontested bid for reelection with a landslide 92% of the vote.
Following ADC-Ikibiri’s protests and the ruling party government’s dismissal of the coalition’s boycott as illegal, the government placed restrictions on opposition party members’ freedom of movement and association. Dozens of opposition party members were arrested and affiliates of both the ruling and opposition parties were found murdered. Fearing a similar fate, several opposition leaders Agathon Rwasa (National Forces for Liberation, FNL), Alexis Sinduhije (Movement for Solidarity and Democracy, MSD) and Pancras Cimpaye (Front for Democracy in Burundi, FRODEBU) fled into exile.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and various Burundian NGOs have produced considerable documentation on politically-motivated crimes committed by government security services and other government representatives during and following the elections. Such documentation reveals the ruling party government’s systematic persecution of opposition party members and affiliates, not to mention civil society activists, journalists (also see) and lawyers. At the same time, evidence is mounting that implicates several opposition party leaders and laymen in efforts to wage an armed rebellion against the Burundian state. Reports of such activity surfaced in late 2010-2011, some of which the UN Group of Experts (GOE) on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) substantiated in a report published last December. The GOE’s interviews of FNL combatants, arrested rebel collaborators, and independent sources reveal that elements of FRODEBU, FNL and MSD have recruited over 500 combatants from South Kivu and Burundian refugee camps in Tanzania, and that FNL militants have collaborated with notoriously predatory rebel groups in South Kivu such as the Mai Mai Yakutumba. The GOE cites a number of opposition political party leaders at the rebellion’s helm, including Agathon Rwasa (FNL), Pancras Cimpaye (FRODEBU), Leonard Nyangoma (National Council for the Defense of Democracy, CNDD), and Pascaline Kampayano (Union for Peace and Development, UPD).
Among the report’s most striking revelations were those incriminating Alexis Sinduhije, MSD’s 2010 presidential candidate, a 2004 Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award winner, and one of TIME magazine’s ‘most influential people in the world’ in 2008. Four mid-level officers in the FNL told the GOE that Sinduhije was responsible for raising funds and moral support for an armed rebellion of which he is purported to be one of the leaders. During a meeting in Dar es Salaam in August 2011, opposition affiliates say that ADC-Ikibiri’s political leadership recognized Sinduhije’s “overall leadership” of the rebellion. According to FNL members, Sinduhije has successfully supplied South Kivu-based FNL combatants with funding, which has been supplemented by the FNL’s sale of gold and hardwoods extracted illegally from the DRC. The GOE may be overly optimistic regarding the veracity of testimonies by Burundian security and intelligence services whose downplaying of the rebellion corresponds with government officials’ attempts at face-saving with frightened rural citizens and cautious international donors; however, the GOE acquired telephone recordings from the Burundian police that expose Sinduhije offering to pay a collaborator’s bail and ordering him to flee – actions that may further corroborate his leadership role.
In an abrupt turn of events last month, the Burundian government requested Tanzanian officials to arrest Alexis Sinduhije based on information contained in the GOE’s report and shaky allegations that Sinduhije had murdered the director of the World Health Organization’s Burundi office. Lacking proof to substantiate the Burundi government’s claims, Tanzania released Sinduhije who is said to have traveled to Uganda following his release.
Although Sinduhije is still referred to as a “political activist” and ADC-Ikibiri continues to be politically engaged at some level, opposition party leaders’ alleged support of armed rebellion has damaging implications. In a country where a great number of government officials and institutions lack legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Burundians and where opposition political parties, media and civil society constitute the only remaining counterweights to a progressively monoparty state, opposition parties will be more effective counterweights by renouncing thuggery for which the ruling party government is well-known. Counterparts are right to emphasize the need for greater oversight over the police and empowerment of Burundi’s newly created National Independent Human Rights Commission; all the same, political parties must make commensurate institutional adjustments by disempowering militant elements in favor of members committed to peaceful political engagement and ultimately, democratic progress. Opposition parties will better serve their institutional and ideological interests by resisting the urge to take up arms, thus restoring their legitimacy among citizens and government reformers alike. Without such legitimacy, opposition parties’ calls for improved governance and increased political space will increasingly fall on deaf ears. While opposition political parties removed from the armed struggle might normally fill the void of rebellious counterparts, a few such parties are experiencing institutional disorder of their own. By all accounts, opposition political parties will have to clean up their act if they seek to effectively counteract their government’s ongoing abuse of power and repressive political reforms.
While its depiction of the Burundian government’s pursuit of political inclusivity warrants circumspection, the World Bank asserts wisely that “while there is cautious optimism after the elections, it remains necessary for national, regional and global partners to help consolidate peace and secure the development gains built over the past ten years.” If Burundi’s political parties fail to renovate themselves and government hardliners continue to erode political liberties, civil society, the media, and Burundi’s few remaining reform-minded politicians may be the country’s only hope of keeping its democratic consolidation ‘torch’ aflame.
