Familiar tale in Africa politics
BURKINA FASO: Despite corruption claims, the man who has led since a 1987 coup is poised to win a third term against a weak opposition
OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO— It’s a familiar election story: man uses court to gain access to the presidency. His term is marred by allegations of corruption and human rights abuses. The opposition, weak and fractious, can’t seem to find a charismatic character to sway the population. Weary voters, fearing the upheaval that change brings, opt to stick with the leader they know. But this is not the election of the leader of the world’s biggest superpower. This is dry, dusty Burkina Faso, where votes are cast with fingerprints behind screens made of woven grass. The forgotten French colony in West Africa is the perennial favourite of aid agencies and poverty groups and usually found at the bottom of the U. N.’ s Human Development Index.
Less than a week after Liberians voted in the continent’s first female president, Burkina’s election embodied an old era in African politics, when big men with big guns and ambitions, and little sense or sympathy, ruled by fear. The capital city is still awash in the green, red and yellow campaign photo of Blaise Compaoré, the military leader who took power 18 years ago. Women and men wear entire outfits fashioned out of material with Compaoré’s portrait woven into the fabric.
Buses, cars, taxis, even bicycles and mobylettes, are plastered with posters saying “ Votez Blaise Compaoré.”
Results from the Independent National Electoral Commission are not expected before tomorrow, but yesterday Compaoré’s supporters claimed victory.
Salif Diallo, campaign manager for the president’s Congress for Democracy and Progress told Reuters Compaoré had won 7080 per cent of the votes with turnout at 60 per cent, higher than expected.
For Sunday’s election, Compaoré enlisted the help of the Supreme Court to hold onto his presidency, since the constitution put in place in 2000 clearly states no one can seek a third five- year term. Compaoré argued, successfully, that since the constitution came into effect after he was last elected president, it should apply to him only after this election, opening the door for another decade of his leadership.
For nearly two decades, Burkina, a flat, featureless dustbowl on the edge of the Sahara Desert has remained one of the world’s poorest countries. If it weren’t for the Burkinabe themselves — who adore cinema and make incredible music — the country, whose name means “ Land of the Upright Men,” would have virtually no redeeming qualities.
Almost all farming is subsistence; cotton production limps along with handouts. Literacy is about 12 per cent and dropping, unemployment is staggeringly high and growing. The country is seriously overpopulated, with more than half of its 12 million residents under the age of 15.
Yet there has been an enormous amount of struggle to run the place: between 1980 and 1987 alone there were five coups, each fairly bloody. The most notable featured army captain Thomas Sankara, whose Marxist-Leninist leanings have been remembered as progressive thinking that saw 350 new schools built and government corruption cut. It was Sankara’s promise to open his bank accounts to public scrutiny that was his downfall: his advisers saw skimming from the coffers as a perk of the job.
In 1987, Compaoré, who had helped bring Sankara to power and had served as his minister of state, enlisted two more army men to organize another coup. Sankara and 12 of his aides were rounded up and executed. Of the men who challenged Compaoré in his first election, one was murdered and another was injured.
In a second election, only a quarter of all eligible Burkinabe voted, since campaign irregularities, including intimidation and threats, caused political parties to boycott the election.
There was only one other competitor, a former showbiz manager named Ram Ouedraogo who headed the truth and reconciliation commission and worked as Compaoré’s minister of state. Ouedraogo is running again, as a Green Party candidate on a platform of development through environmental protection. He saw “ total misery” while campaigning in Burkina’s sparse countryside. While Ouagadougou is a relative oasis of gardens, museums, restaurants and cinemas, the rural towns are clusters of crumbling mud huts, baked under a relentless sun that has killed all their crops for the past three years.
Last year, when locusts descended, the world heard about starvation in Niger and Mali. Burkina Faso, which is sandwiched between them, also saw several thousand people die of hunger. When they needed it most, the millions in donor money that flows into Burkina each year failed to reach them.
Voters must have been thinking about that neglect when Compaoré’s campaign plane reached their dried out towns. He came carrying gifts: T- shirts, ball caps and scarves that are worn in such great quantities, one would think he was a popular, well- loved guy. Ouedraogo is confident it’s all a façade. Voters are afraid, he said, and they feel intimidated and oppressed. “These people are very poor. Very poor. If you give them a T- shirt, they’re going to wear it,” he said.
“ That’s not engagement, that’s not politics, that’s just clothes.”
Local journalist Jean Ky, who provided media training to a handful of the 12 candidates vying for president, calls the tactic “ empty belly politics.”
Despite Compaoré’s dismal record, wary voters remember well the violent struggle for power in the 1980s and say they have no viable alternative. The opposition is so divided, even the two coalition parties couldn’t agree on a single candidate and instead, each submitted three. The leader of parliament’s opposition threw his support behind Compaoré. The desperation to stay president is largely fuelled by Compaoré’s dirty hands, Ouedraogo said.
“ He’s worried that if he’s no longer president, they’ll come after him for killing all those people,” he said. While Compaoré may have been returned to office easily, he will have to deal with the growing unrest of a hungry population that saw the riches of his campaign.
He’ll also have to appease the more than 300,000 Burkinabe who were expelled from Ivory Coast, as part of that country’s campaign to cleanse itself of all but “ pure” Ivoirians, one that led to civil war. Compaoré did little to quell the racial overtones coming from his country’s biggest trading partner and some saw his pronouncements on the skirmish as fuel for the fire. The two countries have a long, imbalanced relationship, with Ivory Coast’s rich mining and cocoa plantations providing jobs to desperate Burkinabe, who propped up the economy with their remittances to family. Now, with Burkinabe returning in droves with little more than suitcases, there is even more poverty.
Although the chances of Compaoré being toppled are dim, workers staged a two- day strike last month to demand better wages, a sign of growing unrest. Compaoré even barred a human rights group from monitoring the elections. Fako Bruno Ouattara, national coordinator of the MBDHP, the French acronym for the group, said they’re most bothered by the fact that voters could obtain a ballot using any one of seven pieces of identification, rather than a voters registration card, a highly unusual circumstance.
“ It’s like that in Africa,” he said. “ In the West, the people tell the chief when he is chief. But here in Africa, the chief tells you when he is chief. “When the chief gives you something, you say, ‘ merci.’ When he gives you nothing, you say nothing. That’s how it is.”