(Ouagadougou) Burkina Faso adopted a charter on Saturday allowing the military regime of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in September 2022 through a coup d’état, to stay for five more years at the head of this country undermined by jihadist violence .
“The duration of the transition is set at 60 months from July 2, 2024,” indicated Colonel Moussa Diallo, president of the organizing committee for the national conference, organized in Ouagadougou.
According to article 22 of the charter, elections can however be organized “before this deadline if the security situation allows it”.
Captain Traoré, whose status changes from “transitional president” to “president of Faso”, will also be able to present himself in “presidential, legislative and municipal elections”, which must be organized at the end of this period, continued Colonel Diallo.
The charter, signed by Captain Traoré on Saturday evening, comes into force immediately.
The national meetings, initially scheduled to end on Sunday, brought together representatives of civil society, defense and security forces and even deputies from the transitional assembly on Saturday.
Most mainstream political parties boycotted the event.
Burkina Faso, plagued by recurring jihadist violence which has left thousands dead for almost ten years, experienced two military coups in 2022.
The first, in January, brought Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba to power, before being himself overthrown in September of the same year, by Captain Traoré.
In the process, a charter was adopted during the first national meetings, establishing a president, a government, a transitional legislative assembly (ALT) and setting the transition period at 21 months.
This transition should therefore be completed on 1er July 2024, but on several occasions Captain Traoré spoke of the difficulty of holding elections given the security context in the country.
“Page of History”
In the new charter signed on Saturday by Captain Traoré, the “quotas” which were allocated to political parties originating in particular from the former majority and opposition for the positions of deputies of the Transitional Legislative Assembly were removed.
12 positions out of 71 remain allocated to political parties, but without specific allocation to a particular formation.
“Patriotism” is set up as a criterion for sitting in this assembly or in the government.
A new body called “Korag”, whose composition and functioning are at the discretion of the Head of State, is also created to “monitor and control the implementation of the country’s strategic vision in all areas and through all means,” specifies the charter.
“You have just rewritten a new page in the history of our country,” said the Minister of Territorial Administration, Emile Zerbo, who opened the meeting on Saturday morning.
The Ouagadougou regime regularly claims to obtain military successes against the jihadist groups who are bloodying a large part of its territory.
But the deadly attacks continue and NGOs like Human Rights Watch have also warned of abuses committed by the army against civilians, which Ouagadougou refutes.
Captain Traoré’s military regime is also accused by civil society organizations of silencing critical voices of the regime.
In recent months, several personalities have been arrested, kidnapped or sent to the front to fight against the jihadists.
Since the September 2022 putsch, Burkina Faso has chosen to diversify its international partnerships.
He first turned his back on France, the former colonial power, by demanding the departure of soldiers deployed on its soil at the beginning of 2023 and by expelling diplomats.
Many French media were also suspended and no French media was accredited for Saturday’s meetings.
At the same time, the regime has moved closer to Russia, but also to Iran and Turkey and its two neighbors, Niger and Mali, also governed by soldiers who came to power through coups and they too faced with jihadist violence.
In Burkina, these attacks which have been hitting the country for almost ten years and which are attributed to armed movements affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have left more than 20,000 dead and two million displaced.