One is dead and the other in exile, but the shadows of former presidents Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré loom large over Burkina Faso as the country chooses a new government on Sunday.
Nearly 5.5 million people are expected to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections to replace the interim government that has ruled since a popular uprising forced Compaoré out of office more than a year ago.
“This is definitely the most open election since the country’s independence,” analyst Cynthia Ohayon told Reuters. “You actually don’t know who is going to win, even though there are front-runners.”
Jazz, rivalry and revolution: Burkina Faso recalls spirit of Sankara
Almost all of the 14 presidential candidates have ties to the former government run by Compaoré – who came to power after organising a coup which killed Sankare in 1987.
Yet Sankara and Compaoré were once comrades – and bandmates in a local jazz group, Tout-à-Coup Jazz. Sankara played the guitar with Compaoré was on vocals.
Sankara was the country’s first independent president, renaming it from the colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso – “land of the upright men”. He was only in charge for four years, from 1983 to 1987, but instigated one of the largest programmes of social and economic reform in Africa. By the time he was assassinated in 1987, Burkina Faso was growing all of its own food for the first time.
In contrast, the 27-year rule of Compaoré was characterised by corruption and cronyism. Before last year’s uprising forced him into exile, he was on his way to becoming yet another of Africa’s presidents-for-life.
Now, as the Burkinabé head to the polls for the first free election in 30 years, the legacies of these two leaders will play a major role in determining the country’s future.
Sankara has already had his say. The thousands of protesters who took to the street in October 2014 invoked his name repeatedly. They wore t-shirts emblazoned with Sankara’s image, and chanted his government’s slogan: “La patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons!” (“Homeland or death, we will overcome!”).
Bénéwendé Sankara (no relation), one candidate in the election, is running on an explicitly Sankarist platform, advocating a return to the former leader’s radical socialist principles. “Sankara’s spirit still floats over Burkina Faso,” he said. He is not expected to win.
Compaoré’s influence is just as strong, however. The man himself may have fled to Morocco, but the power structures he left behind nearly unravelled Burkina Faso’s democratic experiment before it had even begun.
In September a coup led by Compaoré’s right-hand man, General Gilbert Diendéré, briefly toppled President Michel Kafando’s interim government and forced the postponement of the elections that were originally scheduled for October. But without the support of the people or the rest of the military, the coup didn’t last.
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The two front-runners in the election were particularly close to Compaoré. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was prime minister from 1994-1996 and one-time leader of Compaoré’s Congress for Democracy and Progress party, while Zephirin Diabre was finance minister and economic adviser to the former president.
Kaboré is the real favourite, and has promised that his background won’t prevent him from ushering in change. During his campaign, he said that there’s no place in his “new Burkina Faso” for “all the lazy, all the fraudulent, (and) the fruits of growth will be shared among all Burkinabés, not a single handful of people who grow fat on the backs of the population.”
For some young Burkinabés, Kaboré’s ties to Compaoré are disillusioning. “Blaise ruled for 27 years,” student Mariam Traore told Reuters. “Roch was with him for 25 years. He’s the same thing.”
Yet his popularity suggests Compaoré might not have been as widely disliked as his critics claim.
“The elections will only usher in a period of democracy and change if the incoming regime can address the core failings of the Compaoré era, and create a democratic and open space for those who supported Compaoré as well as those who opposed his regime,” said Frank Charnas, CEO of risk analysis firm Afrique Consulting.
“The attempted coup of September 16 demonstrated that there remains a portion of the population who are wary of revolution and hold allegiance to the previous regime.”
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