OUAGADOUGOU: After a rocky year that saw Burkina’s people successively rise up to oust a longtime leader and then repel a military coup, the West African nation votes for a new president in a poll on Sunday seen as ushering in a new era.

“We will ensure that true democracy is consolidated in Burkina Faso,” interim leader Michel Kafando said last month as the nation of 20 million people geared up to elect a new leader for the first time in almost three decades.

Little more than a year ago, in October 2014, then ruler Blaise Compaore fled the country after 27 years at the helm after being toppled by a popular uprising that lasted less than 48 hours.

A handsome former army officer known as “Beau Blaise”, Compaore took power by force in 1987.

His ouster offered a rare moment of people-power in sub-Saharan Africa, where military coups are more often the flavour of the day.

“Blaise get out!” chanted protesters riled by Compaore’s bid to change the constitution in order to extend his grip on power.

Now exiled in neighbouring Ivory Coast, Compaore himself took office when revolutionary former comrade-in-arms Thomas Sankara — a legendary African leader who came to be known as “Che Sankara” — was gunned down in a coup “Beau Blaise” is now widely believed to have orchestrated.

Sankara put the accent on schools and health and women’s rights in a country that even for Africa is poor. It was under Sankara that it began to host Africa’s biggest film festival, Fespaco.

People foil coup

Then in September this year, weeks before a presidential vote originally scheduled for October, elite army leaders close to Compaore made a bid to seize power in a putsch.

But again, angry people took to the streets foiling the military coup. Its leaders were thrown behind bars and the presidential and general elections delayed to Nov 29.

A total of 14 candidates are running for president, a five-year mandate now limited to two terms in office under recent legislation enacted to entrench the two-term rule in the constitution.

In a bid to entrench the legitimacy of the new head of state, members of the interim government have been banned from standing as have all those who backed Compaore’s bid for a third term, as well as members of his Congress for Democracy and Progress party (CDP).

The pro-Compaore CDP is nonetheless running candidates in parliamentary elections and is expected to do well in parts of the country traditionally behind “Beau Blaise”.

In the race for the presidency meanwhile, seven of the 14 contenders were close to Compaore, including the two favourites for the job — Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Zephirin Diabre.

After holding plum posts throughout his 27-year regime, both Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Zephirin Diabre left Compaore’s side before he was toppled in October last year by protesters angered by the veteran leader’s bid to cling on to power.

The two high-flying economists head a roster of 12 candidates running in a two-round vote for the Burkina presidency that also includes another figure from the Compaore regime, former foreign minister Ablasse Ouedraogo.

At the other end of the spectrum, lawyer Benewende Sankara lays claim to the legacy of revered Marxist leader Thomas Sankara — but is no relation — who was murdered during the coup that brought Compaore to power in 1987.

Roch Marc Christian Kabore

Kabore, an affable and strongly-built banker of 58, is a former prime minister who also served several times as a minister but who turned his back on Compaore in January last year.

“We can be sure and confident that we will deliver a knockout blow,” he said on launching his election campaign.

Some observers see him as the right man for the job because of his wealth of political experience, and believe his sizeable campaign fund could see him secure a first-round victory.

A Roman Catholic, Kabore served as premier from 1994 to 1996, steering Burkina through hardship caused by the devaluation of the CFA franc, a currency pegged at a set euro rate.

For over a decade he led the ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) party and was seen as Compaore’s likely heir. But he abruptly fell out of favour in 2012 and was thrown out of the leadership to become a mere “political advisor”.

He nevertheless initially backed a constitutional amendment proposal enabling Compaore to run for another term but early last year broke with the CDP to form the opposition Movement of the People of Progress (MPP) gathering a score of parties.

Zephirin Diabre

Also from a Roman Catholic family, Diabre has a doctorate in management sciences from France’s Bordeaux university and briefly worked as assistant professor at Ouagadougou university before opting for business.

He worked with the Brakina brewery, a subsidiary of French group Castel, and entered politics as a member of parliament for Compaore’s CDP in 1992.

Now 56, Diabre served several times as a cabinet minister, notably steering Burkina towards a market economy after the years of socialism under left-winger Sankara.

Considered to be a liberal economist, Diabre was the minister of the economy who privatised state-owned companies.

After a spell in charge of the national Economic and Social Council, Diabre left to become deputy director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) thanks in part to backing from Compaore.

His UN post was followed by a top job with French nuclear giant Areva, in which Diabre ran the Africa and Middle East branch.

On the political front, in 2009 he created a Citizen’s Forum for Alternate Governance (Focal), followed two years later by the neo-liberal Union for Progress and Change (UPC), which took 19 seats in parliament the first time it contested an election.

The UPC was the driving force in the political front opposed to changing the constitution to feed Compaore’s greed for more time in office.

But many observers feel Diabre’s political ambitions may be handicapped because he comes from the minority Bissa ethnic group in the southeast, while Burkina Faso has a Mossi majority.

Diabre has called for “true change” in the country and accuses Kabore of being a “Compaore without Compaore”.

But this might win him votes in a backhanded way as some observers believe Compaore loyalists could prefer Diabre to Kabore, whom they see as a traitor.—AFP

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2015

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