On 22 November (as announced in February), Burkina Faso will have simultaneous presidential and legislative elections. The presidential election will pit incumbent President Roch Kaboré against what I assume will be a host of challengers. The legislative elections will determine the occupants of the 127 seats in the country’s unicameral National Assembly. Municipal elections will follow in 2021.
Kaboré was elected in 2015 following the country’s 2014 revolution against longtime dictator Blaise Compaoré (in office 1987-2014). Kaboré and several other key figures, most notably Salif Diallo (d. 2017) and Simon Compaoré (no relation to Blaise that I know of), broke with Compaoré in 2012 and formed their own party, the Mouvement du Peuple pour le Progrès (People’s Movement for Progress, MPP) in 2014. Simon Compaoré is currently president of the MPP.
Kaboré may be in a bit of trouble in terms of re-election prospects. Objectively, the situation in Burkina Faso appears quite bad on several fronts: 2019 was the most violent year of the country’s ongoing insurgency, and in addition to the conflict zones in the north and east, violence may be poised to tick upwards in the southwest, site of a recent joint operation between the security forces of Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire. Largely due to the conflict, over 900,000 people have been displaced, most of them since the start of 2019. The security forces are accused of committing regular and serious human rights abuses against civilians, and the government is formally investigating the recent, alleged extrajudicial killings of 12 civilians in an eastern town called Tanwalbougou. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on the country, especially the economy – the World Bank (.pdf, p. 105) initially projected that Burkina Faso’s gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 6% in 2020, but has since revised that forecast to just 2%.
In the national Présimètre poll, whose most recent iteration just came out, clear and sometimes dramatic majorities of respondents voice dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of key issues. On Slide 24, for example, 79.7% of respondents express dissatisfaction with the security situation in the country, and 83% are dissatisfied with the cost of living. Not everything is bad news for the government – on Slide 30, you can see that respondents’ confidence in key institutions is ticking upward after hitting a low in the June 2019 poll. But confidence is still under 40% for the government, the parliament, and the political parties. Furthermore, 73% of respondents plan to vote in the next election (Slide 32), but over 65% of respondents have not yet decided whom to vote for (Slide 34). 63% of respondents are dissatisfied with Kaboré’s performance (Slide 40), compared with 66% who were dissatisfied a year ago. Although respondents acknowledge that Kaboré inherited a tough situation, they also feel he “lacks the firmness that is required.” The average score that respondents gave his overall performance, on a 10-point scale, was 4.53 – his lowest score yet, in iterations of the Présimètre poll, since 2017.
Nevertheless, and perhaps quite expectedly, the MPP’s Simon Compaoré expresses confidence that Kaboré will win re-election easily. In a recent interview, Compaoré called it “a realistic ambition” to re-elect Kaboré “with a comfortable score of at least 60% of the votes.” That would mean avoiding the type of run-off that has proven electorally fatal for several West African incumbents over the years, for example Senegal’s Abdou Diouf in 2000 and Diouf’s successor Abdoulaye Wade, in turn, in 2012. Like many other West African countries, Burkina Faso has a two-round election system; if the incumbent fails to obtain 50% in the first round, it gives the (often fractured) opposition a chance to unite against him (it’s always been a him in Burkina Faso, so far) in the second round.
A few challengers have emerged so far:
- Zéphirin Diabré, president of the Union for Progress and Change (l’Union pour le progrès et le changement, UPC), runner-up in the 2015 election;
- Eddie Komboïgo, candidate of the former ruling party the Congress for Democracy and Progress (Congrès pour la démocratie et la progrès, CDP);
- Gilbert Ouédraogo, president of the political party The Alliance for Democracy and Federation/African Democracy Rally (l’Alliance pour la démocratie et la fédération/Rassemblement démocratique africain, ADF/RDA);
- Former Culture and Tourism Minister Tahirou Barry, who is supported by a coalition of parties called the Movement for Change and Rebirth (Mouvement pour le changement et la renaissance).
In the legislature, the MPP hopes to increase its share from the current 55 seats it has (out of 127). The UPC holds 33, the CDP 18, and no other party holds more than 5 seats.
The MPP is now looking ahead to its extraordinary congress on July 11, when it will formally invest Kaboré as the party’s candidate.
Various questions remain to be settled: Will the displaced be able to vote, and if so, how? Will credible voting be able to proceed in conflict zones? Will any candidacies be invalidated, and on what basis? Will a unifying figure emerge from within the opposition?
For now, if I had to predict, I would guess that Kaboré will be re-elected – despite the very low scores he and the government received in the Présimètre poll, I think that the advantages of incumbency, combined with the fragmentation of the opposition, will help him across the finish line. I also think he may benefit, electorally, from the displacement and the insecurity – and I say that not in a conspiratorial sense, not in the sense of accusing the government of fostering instability for political advantage, but rather in the sense that a smaller electorate can benefit the incumbent even if that incumbent is trying, in however flawed a manner, to address the conditions that shrink that electorate. But in any event, there is a lot of time, politically speaking, between now and November.
Sahel Blog 