6/8/08

Burundi's main opposition party fractures

Burundi's main opposition party fractures


(AFP)

8 June 2008

BUJUMBURA - Burundi's main opposition party fractured Sunday after a group of legislators broke ranks and formed a new faction allied to the government.

Former parliament speaker Jean Minani led 12 of 25 Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) lawmakers to defect into the newly-formed FRODEBU-Nyakuri, or Real FRODEBU.

'It is a historic day because today we join the real FRODEBU,'  Minani said.

The move follows Friday's constitutional court ruling that authorised the sacking of 22 former MPs whose February defection from the ruling party deprived President Pierre Nkurunziza of a parliamentary majority.

Nkurunziza's party has suffered a crisis since the sacking of party chief Hussein Radjabu in February 2007, prompting a score of MPs to defect to the opposition.

The crisis hobbled parliament as the ruling party lacked a majority, but eased when a coalition government of the two main opposition parties was formed in November.

'If we add the 12 MPs from Minani's FRODEBU and those from our party, we will no longer have a problem of parliamentary majority,'  a senior ruling party official told AFP.

But FRODEBU spokesman Pancrace Cimpaye dismissed the new parliament composition as a 'masquerade remote-controlled by the ruling party to divide our party.'

Burundi has been ravaged by a civil war that has claimed over 300,000 lives since 1993 and remains chronically paralysed by political crises and ethnic tensions.

But hopes of peace were raised last month when the leader of the last active rebel group, Agathon Rwasa, returned from exile after agreeing a truce with the governme






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