Burkina votes for new president
After a rocky year that saw Burkina's people successively rise up to oust a long time leader and then repel a military coup, the West African nation votes for a new president in a poll Sunday seen as ushering in a new era.
"We will ensure that true democracy is consolidated in Burkina Faso," interim leader Michel Kafando said last month as the nation of 20 million people geared up to elect a new leader for the first time in almost three decades.
Little more than a year ago, in October 2014, then ruler Blaise Compaore fled the country after 27 years at the helm after being toppled by a popular uprising that lasted less than 48 hours.
A handsome former army officer known as "Beau Blaise", Compaore took power by force in 1987.
His ouster offered a rare moment of people-power in sub-Saharan Africa, where military coups are more often the flavour of the day.
"Blaise get out!" chanted protesters riled by Compaore's bid to change the constitution in order to extend his grip on power.
Now exiled in neighbouring Ivory Coast, Compaore himself took office when revolutionary former comrade-in-arms Thomas Sankara -- a legendary African leader who came to be known as "Che Sankara" -- was gunned down in a coup "Beau Blaise" is now widely believed to have orchestrated.
Comments