{{Burundi’s junior coalition party has accused the president of undermining a delicate power-sharing deal, a constitutional requirement that has kept ethnic tensions in check since a 12-year civil war in the east African nation ended in 2005.}}
The Tutsi-led Uprona party’s three ministers quit the coalition administration last week after President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose CNDD-FDD led by ethnic Hutus is the majority party, sacked his Tutsi vice president, also from Uprona.
The row has centered on constitutional amendments proposed by the president that could allow him a third term and change power-sharing arrangements. Opponents say the steps threaten to marginalize minorities, such as the Tutsis.
The turmoil has triggered the worst political crisis since rebels laid down their arms in Burundi – a landlocked country neighboring Rwanda where Hutu extremists targeted ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 genocide.
Burundi’s political standoff has also raised the specter of more unrest in a region already grappling with violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Adding to tensions, the U.N. Security Council will decide on Thursday whether to renew the mandate of a U.N. mission tasked with supporting political reforms. That vote may test relations between the government, which wants the mission out, and donors, like the United States, that want it to stay.
The Uprona party said it was committed to staying in government, a step that could temper the crisis. But it says it will not be bullied before presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015.
“It is clear the party in power continues with its project to create tension and disorder within our own party,” Evariste Ngayimpenda, a senior Uprona official, told Reuters this week.
The presidency gave no comment despite several requests. But CNDD-FDD officials have said the existing constitution was for the transition and needs to be updated to reflect the changes.
Despite relative calm in recent years, rights groups have reported scores of political killings, intimidation of the opposition and a crackdown on media freedoms since Nkurunziza’s re-election in 2010.
“The ruling party underestimates the degree of frustration and anger over its authoritarian leadership within opposition parties and the population,” said Julien Nimubona, an Uprona government minister until 2013. “This situation risks plunging the country into fresh unrest or even the return to civil war.”
The president, an evangelical Christian popular among rural voters, has not publicly said he will run next year, although senior CNDD-FDD officials argue that he can stand again as his election by lawmakers in 2005 does not count as his first term.
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