Wednesday, 5 November 2014

West African presidents call for one-year transition in Burkina Faso

Lieutenant Colonel Yacouba Isaac Zida meets with opposition leaders in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, November 2, 2014.  REUTERS/Joe Penney


 Three West African presidents urged Burkina Faso on Wednesday to appoint a transitional government to guide the country to elections next year following the people's overthrow of longtime ruler Blaise Compaore last week.
Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama led the delegation from the West African bloc ECOWAS to help Burkina Faso plot a path to a civilian-led transition after the military named a senior army officer as head of state on Saturday.

Mahama, the current ECOWAS chairman, held talks with Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida, opposition politicians, Compaore's supporters, religious leaders and civil society groups. There was a general consensus in favour of a civilian-led interim government, he said.
"There were going to be elections next year. We believe that we should just work with that election date, which is next November," he said. "This means there will be a transitional government for one year and a new president will be elected."
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and Senegalese leader Macky Sall, part of the ECOWAS delegation, agreed with the timetable, Mahama said.
Delegates from the meetings with Mahama said that all the separate groups had been asked to select three candidates for the interim presidency, which would be discussed in a plenary meeting later on Wednesday.
Mahama said the presidents had recommended that members of the interim authority should not be permitted to stand in the elections next year.
WARNED AGAINST CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets last Thursday when Compaore tried to force through parliament a constitutional reform to allow him to seek reelection next year.
He resigned the next day as the sometimes violent protests continued and was forced to flee to neighbouring Ivory Coast with the help of France.
Mahama said regional leaders had attempted to talk Compaore out of the plan to change the national charter to extend his 27-year rule.
"When our colleague decided to do what he wanted to do, I can assure you that several of us spoke with him and advised that it was not a proper thing to do," he said.
The military stepped in following Compaore's departure, dissolving the National Assembly and imposing a curfew. It then appointed Zida, deputy commander of the presidential guard, as provisional head of state on Saturday. He announced the suspension of Burkina Faso's 1991 constitution.
Amid mounting international pressure for a civilian to take the reins of the transition, Zida promised on Monday to quickly cede power to a transitional government.
Burkina Faso has assumed a strategic importance in recent years.
Despite a chequered past including accusations he backed rebels during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Compaore had reinvented himself as a regional power broker and Western ally against Islamist militants.
France has a special forces unit based there as part of its regional counter-terrorism operation and also uses it as a base for surveillance drones.
Senior advisors to Compaore negotiated the release, often for multi-million dollar ransoms, of numerous Western hostages seized in the region. The country also played a mediation role in the crises in neighbouring Mali and Ivory Coast.
Burkina Faso is also emerging as one of Africa's top gold producers.
Zida, previously considered a close ally of the president, received counter-terrorism training in the United States in 2012 on recommendation from the U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou. He attended a second U.S. military course in Botswana.
His was the second recent takeover by a U.S.-trained military officer in the region after a Amadou Sanogo, a captain in the army of neighbouring Mali, overthrew President Amadou Toumani Toure in 2012.
The coup allowed al Qaeda-linked Islamists to seize Mali's desert north and raised questions about whether the U.S. military was doing enough to instil respect for democratic governance in the foreign officers it trained.



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