DEMOCRACY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

Civil Society Personalities' Contributions

For a participatory democratic system which reassures all the ethnic communities, in order to facilitate reconciliation and National Unity reconstruction.

A.Introduction

Recurrent crises which have marked Burundi history have ended up wearing out the social ties inside the country and generating a sharp consciousness of ethnic identity among the two most important groups ; these are Hutus and Tutsis.

The crisis which started in October 1993 has completed this process of ethnic conscience-raising by destroying all values which constituted the basis of Burundi people's unity.

Some politicians do not want to recognize that Barundi people's unity such as it was before independence has been thoroughly dismantled ; some of them do so for sentimental reasons while others do it for political speculations.

This dramatic reality can no longer be ignored. On the contrary, we must take it into account in order to rebuild Burundi people's unity on new foundations. As a matter of fact, building a dynamic, united and prosperous nation without recognizing such a fundamental reality would amount to erecting a baseless structure.

To date, Hutus and Tutsis constitute two principal communities on the psychological level, sociological level as well as political level.

The gulf between the two communities is all the more considerable since it has been created and aggravated on basis of the ideology of genocide that has been present since then in the Great Lakes Region.

Therefore, any stable political system must take this factor into account. This system to be successful, it shall integrate the preoccupation and the ambition of rebuilding national unity without forgetting the facts of the current division. So, the system that is to be accepted must help achieve eventually reconciliation among Burundians and National Unity. The duration of this system will depend on this long process of reconciliation and reconstruction of National Unity.

Henceforth, the following proposals about this system turn on two concrete ideas and objectives notably :

1°Stating and claiming to recover eventually the torn-up National Unity, going through the eradication of the ideology and practices of genocide and insecurity.

2°Researching and setting up a democratic political system which gets rid of all feelings of exclusion by giving equal opportunities of access to State highest positions to Hutus and Tutsis.

B. Institutions

The institutional system that is to be set up for the political, economic and social management of our country in the future must assure the indispensable balance between ethnic communities. Tutsis' fear of continuing to be the designated victims of genocide or becoming victims of political exclusion should be removed. All the same, Hutus' feeling of being puppets in the country's political management and the danger of being innocent victims during the acts of repression of genocide should be pushed away.

In this respect, one shall consider two principles as follows :

1.The new institutions must assure power balance, guarantee and reinforce the state of law which recognizes the same rights for all citizens and offers equal opportunities to all individuals.

2.All ethnic communities must be represented in all institutions in such a way that vital interests are always protected.

These two principles being respected, the following classical institutions are thus proposed :

The executive power of which the leadership and the composition are equitably distributed between both communities.

The President of the Republic

The President of the Republic may be elected on basis of community changeover or political changeover.

The President's election on basis of changeover among communities

The principle of changeover of political power at the position of the President of the Republic between the two conflicting main communities should first be formalized. On one hand, this would avoid ethnic voting which assures Hutus to be the sole pretenders to the top State position forever. On the other hand, it will avoid Tutsis' frustration of never acceding to that top position only because they were born Tutsi. There is no merit in being born Hutu or Tutsi, as there is no inherent flaw in being born Hutu or Tutsi. There must be equal opportunities for all.

Then, a decision must be taken among various possibilities for the real designation of the President of the Republic.

Either he is elected through universal vote. This makes everybody feel very useful since all take part to the designation of the President. But one should observe that this option bears one major disadvantage : the risk of excessive ethnic manipulation of the electorate, while the population keeps telling the elite that they should come to a common understanding on how to rule the country without jeopardizing the common man's life by their politician propaganda. Under this drawback, according to majority vote of one-man one-vote, Hutus might agree on electing the most extremist hutu when it is Hutus'turn to hold the presidency and electing the least representative Tutsi when the turn comes to the Tutsi ethnic community. Also, in a very critical context of extremism, an ethnic community might agree on not casting their vote when it is not its turn to hold the presidency and thus alter seriously the legitimacy of the President-elect. Therefore, this way of acceding to the Presidency should be avoided.

Or he is elected through indirect vote, for example by the Senate and the Parliament together in a congress or by elected delegates from all neighbourhoods (hills) who would be considered to be the senior electorate.

Or also, he can be elected through direct universal vote on basis of primary elections at the Senate and the Parliament in order to set bounds to the noxious competition on people who are not able to assess political or politician stakes.

Preferably, the Head of State should come from the Parliament or the Senate and be elected by the Congress. The advantage of this alternative is that the candidate being already member of Parliament or Senate he already enjoys people's legitimacy.

The President's election on basis of political changeover

The community based changeover as it is described above has the disadvantage of being too mechanical and gives no chance to one man one vote elections. Therefore it is possible to improve the democratic system by allowing everybody to participate directly if there are enough funds without giving any chance to ethnicism by formalizing political changeover.

To substantiate this, first, the Congress i.e. the Senate and the Parliament all together, would gather by ethnic groups in order to designate presidential candidates within each group, let us say 10 candidates per ethnic group.

Second, the Congress would ask these candidates to constitute couples (1 Hutu + 1 Tutsi) and put forward a political plan.

Third, if there are 10 couples, the Congress would select 3 to be proposed by direct universal vote. The couple who would receive more votes would then achieve the top State position.

Then for example on a six year term, one of the two would hold the President's seat for three years while the second would be Vice-President and swap their positions for the last three years.

In this system, the Prime Minister's position would be cancelled for reasons of economy and efficiency.

Once again in order to avoid excessive ethnic manipulation of the electorate, the election of the President and the Vice-President may be assigned to the Congress only on basis of fellow candidates as above mentionned.

The system of fellow candidates would much contribute to restore National Unity.

The Government

Its composition shall comply with the proportions of community representation recognized by the Constitution.

All Cabinet members shall be accepted by the Senate.

Local administration

The commune (district) administrator should be elected by the Commune (district) Council, bearing in mind that the Council itself is elected by neighbourhood (hill) delegates.

The legislative institution made of two chambers :

·The Chamber of representatives in which communities shall be represented according to the proportions recognized by the Constitution and providing mechanisms of qualified majority to pass some laws.

·The Senate shall be composed in such a way that both communities are equally represented. Ganwa and Twa groups should also have representatives in this institution.

In addition to its legislative role of passing laws sent by the Chamber of Representatives, the Senate will have to approve of some important decisions taken by the Executive such as nominations for senior State positions like Cabinet ministers, provincial governors, ambassadors, senior positions in the security forces, and so on… (cf. the American system).

For budgetary reasons, the Senate and the Parliament all together should not count a number of members that goes much beyond the current number of parliamentarians.

The judicial power must be independent from the Executive power and shall be composed of magistrates who are recruited on basis of competence, morality and Ubushingantahe.

C.Electoral system

Burundi must have a democratic political system which allows all citizens to select their leaders at all levels. 

But due to the increase of the ethnic mentality generated by genocide and tendency to exclusion, direct universal vote (one man one vote) without a counterbalance of the ethnic factor would lead necessarily to a Hutu monoethnic power held by extremists who advocate Tutsi extermination.

Such a political system would be unstable for sure. There is a way of developing an electoral system which is likely to reconcile the three following imperative requirements :

·All citizens'right to select their leaders at all levels.

·Each community's right to be fully represented in all State institutions.

·Any candidate to election must seek confidence from both communities as this is bound to set aside all ethnic extremists.

Parties who are in peace talks in Arusha have put forward some electoral systems such as ethnically mixed and blocked lists. This system could be possibly improved by a coopting mechanism.

This system bears two major weaknesses

·It ends up providing a sort of representation which does not reassure ethnic communities because candidates are chosen by political parties instead of ethnic communities while it is now common knowledge that ethnic identity has overtaken political programmes and party membership.

·Cooptation is perceived as a choice made by the entitled authority of a cringing colleague. Indeed all along the last forty years after independence, although there have been many Hutu Cabinet members, they have always been wrongly considered as servants by ethnic-minded Hutu groups only because they were appointed by a Tutsi authority. This possibility should be avoided in the future institution by assuring that leaders are promoted by their ethnic communities.

No Burundian citizen should feel any more in the right position of stating what former President Sylvestre NTIBANTUNGANYA said on February 14, 2000 on the occasion of the first Burundi National Prayer Breakfast "when speaking surely about Hutus under past regimes he said "They are no longer content with playing second roles, they do not want to be any more items which are exhibited to testify that exclusion is over. They want to take part fully to the management of their motherland's business…".

Tutsis will not accept the institutionalization of this puppet's role former President Ntibantunganya asserts different leadership had given to Hutus.

Therefore, it is essential to set up an electoral system which leads to participatory democracy that reassures all ethnic communities.

The electoral system hereunder described provides an adequate answer to all three requirements

The choice of community representatives in various institutions should be organized at two levels :

1.Each community should select the candidates it feels best to preserve its own interests as well as the national interest.

2.The election by direct universal vote.

a)The choice of each community's candidates for the direct universal vote

The running of such a system presupposes that from the grassroots level to the commune and provincial level, communities have set up electoral colleges. In practice, this means that each community designates its representatives at the ward level (hill) and these take part to the electoral community college at the commune (district) level.

A number of wards have very few Tutsis because Hutus have gradually exterminated them since 1965, 1972, 1988, 1991 and from 1993 till now. However there are Tutsi natives of those wards who live now in different small towns throught the country. The right to participate to the political management of those wards of origin should be recognized for all those genocide survivors. First, by not doing so, one would be rewarding those who killed them, then when peaceful cohabitation will be eventually possible again and national unity restored, it remains an open possibility to go back to their homestead.

Playing a role in the political management of their wards of origin must remain possible for all other Burundian citizens who have settled in other places for professional reasons as they may go back to live in their native places any time.

There will be two electoral community colleges which will then select their representatives to the electoral community colleges at the provincial level (electoral constituency).

Each electoral community college will elect democratically at the constituency level the candidates who are felt best to preserve both community interests and the national interest.

These are then the candidates who are presented for direct universal vote by the whole electorate. Their number must be determined by the election law according to the proportions recognized by the Constitution as agreed upon among communities and must be at least twice as many seats to be provided.

It must be ascertained that the position of an electoral college member is incompatible with being a candidate to any election in order to avoid conflicting interests.

b)Electoral procedures for parliamentarians

Every Burundian citizen who has reached the voting age receives one ballot-paper on which there are two different lists of the candidates who have been designated by each electoral community college at the constituency level.

Every voter must indicate his choice on each list otherwise his ballot-paper is void.

Votes will be counted on each electoral community list and candidates who come near the top in each community will be considered to be the winners.

To substantiate this electoral system, let us consider the following example :

Supposing the Constitution has provided for 50% and 50% representation proportions for Hutus and Tutsis respectively at the Chamber of Representatives and the election law has determined that in Gitega constituency there are 10 seats (5 Hutus and 5 Tutsis). The Hutu community college must select 10 candidates representing the Hutu community of Gitega while the Tutsi community college of the same constituency must also select 10 candidates. All 20 candidates are then presented for direct universal vote.

Each ballot-paper held by any elector must indicate clearly one list of 10 Hutu candidates and another list of 10 Tutsi candidates following the order determined previously by each electoral community college.

In the polling-booth, each voter is compelled to choose 5 names on the Hutu list and 5 names on the Tutsi list, otherwise the ballot-paper will be void.

At the counting stage, votes will be counted separately following community lists. Then 5 Hutus and 5 Tutsis who get more votes are the winners.

As far as the Senate is concerned, elections should be organized in the same way as for parliamentarians so as to get maybe two senators per province. However, the Senate may be completed by giving room to some balance which is deemed necessary.

Illiterate electors are allowed to use penpushers whom they trust to indicate their electoral preference. This procedure was used successfully in 1961 under the first elections which were supervised by the United Nations, and in 1982.

Advantages of this electoral system

§Both above-said requirements are fully met in so far as each citizen enjoys his democratic right to select his representatives and each ethnic group is represented validly.

§Both communities send to national institutions people who are deemed best to preserve their interests.

§In view of restoring national unity, having each elected representative who enjoys enough trust from each ethnic group is likely to knit together the already worn-out national fabric. In fact, any election candidate must seek confidence from both communities and this is bound to set aside all ethnic extremists.

§As people know each other at the grassroots level and live together harmoniously under normal circumstances, there is no need of organizing an ethnic census in order to identify members of each community.

Moreover, this process is likely to promote participatory democracy at the grassroots level as it starts from the ward (census unit).

D.The role of political parties in the new system

Political parties will remain the driving force behind the country's political activities. They will define their political programmes and promote them among the Burundian population. Within a sound democratic competition in search for power, political parties will be allowed to interact with the population in order to publicize their programmes and support their candidates namely for legislative elections. Therefore any political party willing to become a real political party which has the most appreciable policy among all ethnic communities gets more chance to implement it through the electorate, and so rule the country.

Concerning the elections, each political party is free to present candidates to electoral community colleges for their designation for election. It should be clear that beside political party candidates, there will be independent candidates. 

Regarding the approval of political parties, the main guidelines of the current law can be maintained provided some amendments are done in view of adapting the law to present circumstances. One should bear in mind above all that political parties are responsible for ethnic teachings but have never been able to restore urgently the normal situation whenever the country was under fire. The regulation of political parties must take this into account so as their sectarian speculations can no longer bring up division and put the country into pieces.