The Appropriateness or Inadequacy of the Multi-Party System in Burundian Politics

Abstract

Today’s Burundi politics is based on a multi-party system as a way of implementing democracy. This system allows the existence of various political parties which take part in elections and have equal possibilities of running government offices either as single parties or in coalition. In Burundi, as well as in many other African countries, that multi-party system started during the colonisation period in the 1950’s. However soon after independence in the 1960’s, this political system collapsed in favour of single-party systems characterised by authoritarian military political systems except in Botswana, in Gambia, and in the Mauritius island. This research has been conducted with the purpose of knowing whether the multi-party system fits the Burundian politics or not. In total, it has been possible to gather responses from 600 informants from Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, from various Burundi geographical regions of origin, with the age of 18 years or more, from all genders, and from different educational backgrounds. The main research instrument which has been used for collecting data was interview. Among all those respondents, 450 were males, whereas 150 were females. The findings of this investigation have revealed that in Burundi males prefer a multi-party system over a single-party one at the rate of 93.3%, while females support a single-party system at the rate of 100%.