FEATURE: Burkina Faso moves ahead with elections despite extremist attacks
President Roch Marc Kaboré, who took office in December 2015 and is seeking a second five-year term, has pledged that his ruling People’s Party Movement for Progress will continue to fight terrorism.
PRETORIA, November 18 (ANA) – Burkina Faso will on Sunday go to the polls to vote in the presidential and legislative committee, but the presence of militant groups has disrupted voter registration in some parts of the country and could prevent people from casting ballots on the day.
This month’s elections is only Burkina Faso’s second democratically held election since gaining independence from France in 1960. The first one was held five years ago after an uprising ousted President Blaise Compaore, after he overtook the country through a 1987 coup that ousted his former friend and Marxist firebrand Thomas Sankara.
Compaore went on to rule for 28 years. In 2015, when he sought to change the electoral rules so he could run again, a large portion of his party abandoned him.
Five years ago the country was hailed as a model of stability in the region. Violence began in 2016, when the conflict in neighbouring Mali overflowed to the northern region of Burkina Faso.
Rising violence from extremist organisations operating within the country have pushed the government to change the electoral code so that in the event of force majeure or exceptional circumstances preventing operations of elections in certain parts of the country, elections may continue based on the results of those polling stations that manage to open.
Essentially, it means results from this month’s election will be considered valid even if people can’t vote in parts of the country.
This new electoral code has raised concerns among candidates whose supporters are mainly in villages and are unreachable due to violence. Political parties fear that they won’t get the numbers they need to win legislative seats.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of the displaced Burkinabè, more than 400,000 will be unable to vote because they have lost identification papers or were unable to register.
The country’s Independent Electoral Commission said it could not register prospective voters in roughly 1,500 villages because of insecurity but said residents could travel elsewhere in the country to register and vote.
Despite the opposition parties agreement to proceed with the election, even if many are unable to vote, the new electoral code overwhelmingly benefits the incumbent.
According to Geopolitical Monitor, the force majeure provision was not the only change made to the electoral code. The National Assembly changed the electoral code in July 2018 to prohibit the use of the already widely held consular cards, which is an identity document issued by the embassy to citizens registered in its jurisdiction as a voter registration document.
“This year Burkinabe citizens will have to switch to a passport or a national ID card. A new passport can cost as much as $US 200, or one-month’s rent in Ouagadougou, and not everyone currently has these documents. The change could keep hundreds of thousands of expats, who are regarded as critical of Kaboré, from voting., Geopolitical Monitor said in its report.
President Kabore is seeking a second term in office. However, some opposition parties have accused Kabore of engineering the political system to remain in power, saying these changes to the election laws fit a pattern of electioneering across the region.
Geopolitical Monitor said West Africa is experiencing a rise in election engineering as politicians cling to power. At the same time, politicians have realised that cheating in elections has become more difficult.
“Rigging outcomes on election day, by stuffing ballot boxes or changing vote tallies, has become more difficult in recent years,” Mathias Hounkpe of the Open Society Initiative West Africa was quoted saying.
“As a result, politicians are increasingly using election law changes, constitutional changes, repressive laws, arrests and violence, as tactics to remain in power.”
According to the authors of The Logic of Political Survival, “the desire to remain in office motivates the selection of policies and the allocation of benefits; it shapes the selection of political institutions and the objectives of foreign policy; it influences the very evolution of political life.”
– African News Agency (ANA), Edited by Naomi Mackay