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100 directly seats in the National Assembly | |||||||||||||||||
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36 seats in the Senate | |||||||||||||||||
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Burundiportal |
Parliamentary elections are due to be held in Burundi on 5 June 2025. [1]
The National Assembly has 100 directly elected members, who are elected in 18 multi-member constituencies (equal to the provinces) using the closed list proportional representation system, with seat allocation decided by the d'Hondt method with a national 2% electoral threshold. [2] A further three members of the Twa ethnic group are appointed, and more members are co-opted to ensure a 60–40 split between Hutus and Tutsis, and a 30% quota for female MPs. [3]
The Senate is elected by colleges of local councillors, with three Twa members appointed and more members co-opted to ensure a 50–50 split between Hutus and Tutsis and a 30% quota for female Senators. [3]
Human occupation of Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 11th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted in the kingdom coming to control most of what is now Rwanda. The colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court.
Elections in Botswana take place within the framework of a multi-party democracy and a parliamentary system. The National Assembly is mostly directly elected, and in turn elects the President and some of its own members. The Ntlo ya Dikgosi is a mixture of appointed, hereditary and indirectly elected members.
The National Assembly is the lower chamber of Parliament in Burundi. It consists of 100 directly elected members and between 18 and 23 co-opted members who serve five-year terms.
The Senate is the upper chamber of Parliament in Burundi. It consists of between 39 and 56 members who serve 5-year terms. The current Senate was elected on 20 July 2020 and consists of 39 members. Under the newly promulgated 2018 constitution and following the new administrative division, the senate similarly to the national assembly saw its number of seats reduced. The senate goes from 39 seats to 13 seats starting from the 2025 legislative elections.
The Federal National Council (FNC) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an advisory quasi-parliamentary body in the UAE. The FNC consists of 40 members. Twenty of the members are indirectly elected by the hand-picked 33% of Emirati citizens who have voting rights through an electoral college, while the other twenty are appointed by the rulers of each emirate. According to Reuters, "the process of selecting the people who can either elect or be elected is opaque."
A constitutional referendum was held in Burundi on 28 February 2005. The new constitution was approved by 92% of voters.
Parliamentary elections were held in Burundi on 4 July 2005. The result was a victory for the National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD–FDD), which won 64 of the 118 seats in the National Assembly
Hutu Power is an ethnic supremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and therefore, they are entitled to dominate and murder these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and the members of their families, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and the Twa, who were considered traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Parmehutu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi paramilitary militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe paramilitary militia. The belief in the theory that Hutu people are superior is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where they make up the majority of the population. Due to its sheer destructiveness, the ideology has been compared to Nazism in the Western world.
Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa, with population of over 14 million people. It is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. The capital city is Gitega and the largest city is Bujumbura.
Ethnic groups in Burundi include the three main indigenous groups of Hutu, Tutsi and Twa that have largely been emphasized in the study of the country's history due to their role in shaping it through conflict and consolidation. Burundi's ethnic make-up is similar to that of neighboring Rwanda. Additionally, recent immigration has also contributed to Burundi's ethnic diversity. Throughout the country's history, the relation between the ethnic groups has varied, largely depending on internal political, economic and social factors and also external factors such as colonialism. The pre-colonial era, despite having divisions between the three groups, saw greater ethnic cohesion and fluidity dependent on socioeconomic factors. During the colonial period under German and then Belgian rule, ethnic groups in Burundi experienced greater stratifications and solidification through biological arguments separating the groups and indirect colonial rule that increased group tensions. The post-independence Burundi has experienced recurring inter-ethnic violence especially in the political arena that has, in turn, spilled over to society at large leading to many casualties throughout the decades. The Arusha Agreement served to end the decades-long ethnic tensions, and the Burundian government has stated commitment to creating ethnic cohesion in the country since, yet recent waves of violence and controversies under the Pierre Nkurunziza leadership have worried some experts of potential resurfacing of ethnic violence. Given the changing nature of ethnicity and ethnic relations in the country, many scholars have approached the topic theoretically to come up with primordial, constructivist and mixed arguments or explanations on ethnicity in Burundi.
The largest ethnic groups in Rwanda are the Hutus, which make up about 85% of Rwanda's population; the Tutsis, which are 14%; and the Twa, which are around 1%. Starting with the Tutsi feudal monarchy rule of the 10th century, the Hutus were a subjugated social group. Belgian colonization also contributed to the tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis. The Belgians and later the Hutus propagated the myth that Hutus were the superior ethnicity. The resulting tensions would eventually foster the slaughtering of Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. Since then, policy has changed to recognize one main ethnicity: "Rwandan".
The Rwandan Revolution, also known as the Hutu Revolution, Social Revolution, or Wind of Destruction, was a period of ethnic violence in Rwanda from 1959 to 1961 between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda. The revolution saw the country transition from a Tutsi monarchy under Belgian colonial authority to an independent Hutu-dominated republic.
Parliamentary elections were held in Burundi on 29 June 2015. The vote had been initially set for 5 June 2015, alongside local elections, but it was delayed due to unrest. Indirect elections to the Senate occurred on 24 July.
Parliamentary elections were held in the United Arab Emirates on 5 October 2019 to elect 20 of the 40 members of the Federal National Council. As there were no political parties at the time of the elections, all candidates ran as independents.
General elections were held in Burundi on 20 May 2020 to elect both the president and the National Assembly. Évariste Ndayishimiye of the ruling CNDD–FDD was elected president with 71% of the vote. In the National Assembly elections, the CNDD–FDD won 72 of the 100 elected seats.
In the Rwandan Revolution, the coup of Gitarama was an event which occurred on 28 January 1961 in which the monarchy in Rwanda, then a part of the Belgian mandate of Ruanda-Urundi, was abolished and replaced with a republican political system. The traditional monarchy was led by a Mwami (king), who ruled through an administration of chiefs and subchiefs in the context of a feudal system of patron-client relations based on tribute. The Mwami and most of his chiefs were members of the Tutsi ethnic minority, a group which wielded considerable social, political economic power. Of subordinate status to the Tutsis was the Hutu ethnic majority. As part of their rule, the Belgians institutionalised a racial hierarchy which favoured the Tutsis at the expense of the Hutus.
A gender quota is a quota used by countries and parties to increase women's representation or substantive equality based on gender in legislatures. Women are largely underrepresented in parliaments and account for a 26.9% average in parliaments globally. As of November 2021, gender quotas have been adopted in 132 countries. Around the world, quotas vary greatly in their enforcement and the stage of electoral process targeted, creating three main types of quotas: legislated candidate quotas, voluntary party quotas, and reserved seats. Regardless of their prevalence, they are a controversial measure, creating debates concerning their impacts, both negative and positive.
Parliamentary elections are due to be held in Cameroon in 2025.
The 2010 Senate of Burundi sat from 2010 to 2015.
The National Assembly of Burundi (2020) was elected in May 2020. The ruling CNDD-FDD party retained its majority in the National Assembly of Burundi.