Compaore gets green light to run for third mandate

Burkina Faso’s Constitutional Court has thrown out an opposition bid to stop President Blaise Compaore running for a third term in elections which are less than a month away. Five opposition candidates in the 13 November poll had appealed to the court to declare Compaore’s bid for re-election null and void on the basis of Artcle 37 of the constitution, which sets a two-term ceiling on the office of president. In 1997, the clause was amended by a stacked parliament, which lifted the ceiling to enable heads of state to remain in office for life. But in 2000 parliament re-introduced the two-term limit and reduced the presidential term from seven to five years in office. On Friday the constitutional court's ruled, as Compaore was already in office in 2000, the two-ceiling limit can only apply to the outgoing president from the end of his present mandate in November. The five opposition candidates who challenged the court for a ruling - Benewende Sankara, Ali Lankoande, Norbert Tiendrebeogo, Philippe Ouedraaogo and Ran Ouedraogo - contended on the other hand that the 2000 legislation was relevant. Compaore, a former army captain, seized power in 1987 and then went on to win two landslide elections in 1991 and 1998 that were boycotted by the main opposition parties. “I’m not surprised by the court’s decision,” Sankara, who heads the Union for Renewal/Sankarist Movement (UNIR/LMS) party and is seen as Compaore’s main challenger, told IRIN. Four of the court’s 9 members were former ministers or ambassadors appointed by the head of state, he said. “We’ve lost a judicial challenge, we haven’t lost the elections,” he added. A total 13 candidates are running for the presidency in this West African nation, ranked as the world’s third poorest by the UN Human Development Index. An estimated 80 percent of its 13 million people live on less than US $2 a day. But Compaore remains extremely popular, according to an independent polling institute, the Centre for Democratic Governance. A poll carried out by the institute and published in the local press on Monday gave the outgoing president 67 percent of voter intentions compared with four percent for Sankara.