Mémorandum de l’Association Internationale SurviT-Banguka adressé au président de la République du Burundi sur les Institutions post-transition

Nécessité d'une renégociation des équilibres fondamentaux pour une solution durable à la crise burundaise.

Pour l’unité des Barundi dans la diversité des communautés ethniques

Letter from the International Association SurviT-Banguka sent to the new President of the Republic of Burundi,
H.E Mr Pierre Nkurunziza

Necessity of fundamental balance of power’s of renegotiation sustainable solution to the Burundi’s crisis.

Geneva, September 12 2005

SurviT
Avenue de la Gare 2, 2740 Moutier- SUISSE
E-mail : banguka@tutsi.org
Site web: http://www.tutsi.org

Banguka

To H.E. Peter NKURUNZIZA ,
President of Republic of Burundi

C.C. to

• Martin NDUWIMANA, Primer Vice-President of the Republic of Burundi,
• Alice NZOMUKUNDA, Second Vice-President of the Republic of Burundi,
• Gervais RUFYIKIRI, President of the Burundian senate,
• Immaculée NAHAYO, President of the National Assembly of Burundi,
• Yoweri KAGUTA MUSEVENI, President of Uganda ,
• Thabo MBEKI, President of Republic of South Africa,
• Paul KAGAME, President of the Republic of Rwanda,
• Benjamin MPAKA, President of the Republic of Tanzania,
• Mwai KIBAKI, President of Kenya,
• Joseph KABILA, President of the Republic Democratic of Congo,
• Georges BUSH, President of the United States of America,
• Tony BLAIR, Primer Minister of the United Kingdom and President of the European council,
• Jacques CHIRAC, President of the Republic of France,
• Guy VERHOFSTADT, Primer Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium,
• Paul MARTIN, Primer Minister of Canada,
• Koffi ANAN, General secretary of the United Nations,
• Mrs MacAskie, Special Representative of the UN General Secretary in Burundi.

Your Excellency,

The Tutsi members of the International Association “SurviT-Banguka” have formally recorded your sworn up to the position of Head of Burundi State, on 26 August 2005. They have bitterly recorded aggressive and bellicose declarations of victory made by yours partisans, which suspiciously contrasted with your speeches, and public statements tinged with national conciliation and the return to peace. They are in a state of utter confusion since you have put in place new institutions and particularly when you made public appointment of your government’s members and your close colleagues. They have serious concern in relation with this game of pretended balance between ethnic groups cleverly organised, undoubtedly to delude the opinion of honest citizens in harbouring false illusions.

For their part, the Tutsi, united within the International Association SurviT-Banguka which follows objectively and with serenity the slightest facts of your movement CNDD-FDD on the ground, your partisans and yourself, regret that nothing has yet been settled in Burundi for the only fundamental change observed is that one exclusion system has taken over another one, with all the fate of tragedy which such structure leads us to predict. They are, as a result, demanding a whole renegotiation of the fundamental balance of power between the ethnic groups in conflict, convinced that it is the only way forward, which should be clearly stipulated in the constitution and would lead to a durable and stable solution in Burundi.

This formal requirement from the Tutsi united within the Association SurviT-Banguka is based on the considerations resumed as follow:

1. It is your former Hutu rebel movement, CNDD-FDD, currently known as a political party, which is, from 26 August 2005, in charge of the country’s destiny for the next five years. Your political party (CNDD-FDD) has rejected the Arusha agreement and is claiming its authority derived from the Pretoria Ceasefire General Agreement. Your party, in recognition of its militarist past that has taken a heavy toll of the Tutsi population, has been plebiscite by the Hutu population who are now waiting promised hypothetical rewards.

2. The institutional political system that you have put in place in Burundi is dominated and run exclusively by your political party, the CNDD-FDD. Your party has never accepted the Arusha process; neither did it accept the Agreement, which unfolded. The CNDD-FDD is neither concerned nor does it feel bound by the limited settled acquisitions and particularly the principle of a minority vote sufficient to block a motion, and the changeover of ethnic origin at the State’s presidency. It does reject the power sharing on the basis of ethnic origin quotas, which had been harshly negotiated in the Arusha process by the Burundian political actors, ignoring by the same token the harsh reality of ethnic community, which has resulted from circumstances of ethnic cleansing and the genocide against the Tutsi. Its behaviour is alike a warmonger who has come to power after a military victory.
What is even paradoxically striking is that your system shows that it is based on ethnic quota and by the same token is denying it!! The evidence is that every and each member of the government, or province’s governor or secretary and responsible in any public bodies is systematically branded as Hutu or Tutsi. It is therefore necessary to introduce the system openly as the Arusha Agreement recommended it.

It is agreed that the Association SurviT-Banguka, created after the Arusha process and the signature of the Agreement which resulted from it, had then recorded what it considered as a fait accompli. It had even denounced the lacunae, loopholes and other many imperfections contained in the agreement, but was still recommending that what was agreed upon in terms of power sharing on ethnic quotas basis, as minimalist it may seems, should be safeguarded.

3. Today, it appears that the Arusha agreement has become, save for being an empty shell, a shell full of one ethnic family, the Hutu alone. Your system just snaps one’s fingers at the historical compromise, which aimed to safeguard all the ethnic communities. This state of affairs has been the starting point of the total failure of the negotiation process launched in June 1998 by the late Julius Nyerere and the ensuing agreement which was achieved under the former President Mandela’ sway. It appears that this long, tedious and expensive political and diplomatic exercise was just a trap whose aim was, in the mind of some people, to dismantle the national army with the final objective of establishing the Hutu’s political hegemony in Burundi and to store the Tutsi’s fate to the Hutu’s will at a time they would deem appropriate.
4. Would it be necessary to remind you that the legal and political authority of your power find its source in the Ceasefire General Agreement signed in Pretoria in November 2003 between the former President Domitien Ndayizeye and yourself. You would agree undoubtedly that the legal base has, with the complicity of your mentor, the Mediator Jacob Zuma, completely and deliberately ignored all the concerns expressed for the defence of the Tutsi’s deep aspirations, notably their physical survival and the safeguard of their fundamental interests. Would it be necessary to remind you, that it was agreed between the former President Ndayizeye and the President of the Regional Initiative, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, together with the Mediator Jacob Zuma, that this Ceasefire General Agreement should have been negotiated and signed between the Tutsi Vice-President of the second transitional period, acting on behalf of the Tutsi community, and yourself, in your capacity as leader of the Hutu rebellion movement CNDD-FDD? Against all odds and paradoxically, this agreement was negotiated and signed between yourself and President Ndayizeye, which means by two representatives of the Hutu community in the absence of any representative whatsoever of the Tutsi community. To that end, two leaders from the Hutu community, yourself and your predecessor, sealed off the Tutsi’s fate unbeknownst to them and against their vital interests.

5. The second legal and political authority of your power finds its source within the post-transitional Constitution, which was imposed upon us by the Mediator Jacob Zuma and your predecessor Domitien Ndayizeye, after having entirely stripped the Constitution of the Tutsi’s aspirations and fundamental preoccupations. The majority of the Hutu electorate, politically manipulated, subsequently approved this Constitution which had been adopted by the Hutu members of parliament in the illegal parliamentary session of 17 September 2004. On the other hand, the Tutsi electorate massively rejected the Constitution in the referendum poll held on 28 February 2005.

6. Truly, the Constitution of 28 February 2005 institutionalises, under your leadership, the position of political hegemony of the Hutu community and, in the same time, sealed off the political marginalization of the Tutsi community. It wrings the right from the Tutsi community to elect themselves their own representatives in the political institutions with a quota of 40% as agreed upon in the Arusha agreement. Conversely, and against any logical thinking, it grants the Hutu political parties the right to designate the representatives of the Tutsi community.
The Tutsi community will never accept the political hoax which claims that the Tutsi senators and members of parliament, who were elected on the electoral lists from political parties like the CNDD-FDD and FRODEBU to implement and deliver the Hutu’s manifesto and programs, could ever pretend to represent the Tutsi’s vital interests.

7. This political hoax, initiated by the Mediator Jacob Zuma and the former President Ndayizeye, explains the reasons behind the Constitution’s massive rejection on 28 February 2005 by the members of the Tutsi community. It deprives, as a result, the Constitution of its political legitimacy as was demonstrated by the South African political Researcher, Jan Van Eck, specialist in conflicts resolution on Burundi.

8. It is on these unlawful legal authorities that the Constitution of 28 February 2005 was imposed and upon which the elections were organised. These illegal elections have granted, without any surprise, to the three major Hutu political parties, a position of hegemony in the political arena and an overwhelming legislative supremacy, depriving by the same token the Tutsi political parties (UPRONA, MRC) from any possibility to block a motion by a sufficient minority to safeguard the vital interests of the Tutsi community, as it emerges from the Arusha agreement.

9. What should be a matter of serious concern is that the Constitution of 28 February 2005 has left no room to amend it and has been locked for the benefit of the Hutu community as it can only be amended by the members of parliament, whose majority is Hutu, or by the population (whose three quarters are Hutu) through a referendum. Such an institutional position of monopoly leads us to predict that in the current legislature, your Hutu power could suppress the last ethnic quotas left in the army and the civil service.

10. Wouldn’t be simple to acknowledge that the Arusha agreement’s obsolescence, qualified by your political party as a “bread feeding agreement”, together with the lack of legitimacy of the post-transitional Constitution imposed on the Tutsi Community who have massively rejected it, creates the very conditions of a legitimacy crisis for the new institutional system for which your are the supreme Chief?

11. As a result of the above, you understand that the current situation is far from being the one, which would safeguard all the communities, let alone to create the minimum conditions for a sustainable peace. It is in this context that SurviT-Banguka is inviting you with insistence to tackle this very important Burundian existential issue without faltering and with no further delay.

12. The International Association SurviT-Banguka which defines itself as a pacifist national actor is requesting you, with the utmost insistence, to use your authority to engage, through negotiations, the representatives of the Tutsi community in order to reform the new institutional system, which is unjust and could jeopardize everything achieved, as you are about to do so with the rebellion movement, the PALIPEHUTU-FNL.

13. SurviT-Banguka believes that this is the price to pay to achieve the political legitimacy of the current institutional system because those negotiations would be the only way forward to bring a final end to the tragedy that have plagued Burundi since many years, through a true peace agreement which would rather resolve the crisis than make it worse as is the case with the current course of events.

Juvenal Nduwimfura, President
Maitre Pacelli Ndikumana, Vice-President