The National Assembly elected the country's first ever ombudsman on November 12th. This position was a requirement of the Arusha Accords of 2000, although it had remained vacant until November. The ombudsman's main task is to investigate public complaints about the government, but the elected ombudsman, Mohamed Rukara, is a parliamentarian of the ruling Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie-Forces pour la défense de la démocratie (CNDD-FDD). The ruling party's selection of a senior CNDD-FDD member has caused outrage within the political opposition and civil society, who have argued that a neutral person should have been selected. The Union pour le progrès national (Uprona), a predominantly Tutsi party with 17 seats in the National Assembly, boycotted Mr Rukara's election in protest, as did the three representatives of the Twa ethnic group. The CNDD-FDD, however, was unrepentant.

The ruling party does not consider itself entirely bound by the prescriptions of the Arusha Accords, having come to power despite never having signed it. In particular, the CNDD-FDD has been hostile to the Accords' requirement that both a tribunal and a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) be established to examine the civil war of the 1990s and early 2000s, in which the party was an armed participant. Rather than establish a TRC and tribunal, the government played for time by establishing a commission in 2007 to investigate whether people wanted a TRC (February 2009, The political scene; August 2006, The political scene). This committee was supposed to do its work in six months, but only concluded its work in early December 2010, reporting that over 80% of those it had asked said they wanted a TRC and tribunal. Since the commission's findings were publicised there has been no formal response from the government.