Burkina votes for new president

Compaore has planned to modify the constitution to allow him extend his 27-year rule.

Burkina Faso voted on Sunday in an election which will choose the first new president in decades after long time leader Blaise Compaore was overthrown a year ago in an uprising backed by the army.

With no incumbent on the ballot and the presidential guard now dissolved, candidates and analysts say the vote will be the most open and democratic in Burkina Faso’s history.

Mr. Kabore said that the current polling will provide the country, since its independence in 1960, with a civilian president for the first time. “This is a positive point and a fundamental change from the other elections that we had seen earlier”, said Abdoulaye Soma, chief of Burkina Faso’s society of constitutional law. The polls were pushed back from October 11 after an abortive coup in September by members of the now-disbanded elite presidential guard.

Once again angry citizens took to the streets, foiling the military coup.

“I am happy to vote since there is no outgoing president and the elections bear my hopes of a better future with the president I am going to vote for”, said Tiama Gasse, a 50-year-old trader.

He himself took power in 1987 when revolutionary former comrade-in-arms Thomas Sankara – a charismatic African leader who came to be known as “Che Sankara” – was gunned down in a coup Compaore is now widely believed to have orchestrated.

Kabore heads the Movement of People for Progress (MPP), made up of disaffected allies of the former president who left the party months before Compaore stood down.

The pro-Compaore CDP is still fielding candidates in the parliamentary elections and is expected to do well in parts of the country traditionally behind “Beau Blaise”.

The provisional results of the presidential election could be published on Monday evening at the latest, while those of the legislative elections are expected on Tuesday, December 1, according to CENI.