Burkina Faso: Regime crisis

By African Bulletin on June 6, 2011

The Burkinabe President, Blaise Compaoré, in power since Thomas Sankara was killed in a coup in 1987,

won the last presidential elections, on November 2010, with a score of more than 80 % after a vote marred of “serious irregularities”, according to the opposition. Out of the eight million eligible voters, only three million have participated in the poll, with 1.3 million votes won by president Compaoré.
This massive Soviet Score, ignored by a majority of the population, and fiercely contested today is a sound interpretation of many years of the bad governance plaguing the country in so many socio-economic problems. The country is still facing a series of protests since February, staged first by students and then by soldiers. All this malaise, showing the profound gap, between the politics and army brass, plagued by corruption and a population, whose living conditions are severely degraded with soaring prices of food commodities, is at the heart of the crisis in Burkina Faso. A crisis the power has failed to manage, despite the concessions done to people and mainly to the military. But today the revolt has reached a high level of social disgust, starting with the death of Zongo Justin, the student who died in obscure circumstances. That event had catalyzed the youth   to denounce the police repression, the reign of impunity, unemployment; awakening  painful memories of the assassination of the so beloved investigative journalist, Norbert Zongo, because he was  “the voice of the voiceless”.  In sum, Burkina Faso is facing a serious regime crisis, with a failed power unable to meet the aspirations of young generation of people, quite simply aspiring to a better life, within a free and democratic society.