Dec 02, 2015 Burkina Faso recently headed to the polls to choose their new president for the first time in 27 years decades. The election came one year after veteran leader Blaise Compaore was toppled in a popular uprising, in which demonstrators faced down the security forces.
The successful election will effective establish the country as a beacon for democratic aspirations in Africa. The election also represented a turning point for a West African nation.
After performing his civic duty, the country’s transitional president, Michel Kafando said:
“I’ve come to carry out my civic duty in expressing my vote for the presidential as well as legislative election. I think we can honestly say it is a victory. First a victory for the transitional government who made it a point to organize these elections in only a year. We’ve had, what, you know, especially those events and despite everything we are still on course in 2015 and we think the process will reach its term.”
Also commenting on the election, Zephirin Diabre, candidate for the Union for Progress Party said:
“It’s a historical day for several reasons: It’s the first time we have had such open elections as far as democracy and transparency is concerned following the October 2014 revolution which will mark a new beginning for the Burkinabe democracy.”
The election, which was initially supposed to hold on the 11th of October, was postponed after an abortive coup in September by members of the elite presidential guard.
Regarding the transparency of the exercise, word on the street had it that:
“We welcome the people’s mobilization, you can see since six a.m. this morning. People have been coming out because we believe in this historical election, the vote will really count. We think we are going to make a choice according to our conscience and if people came out today, it is to vote for their preferred candidate. And we wish that everything will happen peacefully and that results will be accepted by all.”
“In any case, the elections this year are transparent. These are elections that we have never done, because the elections we’ve done before, we already knew who would be the winner but this year we don’t know who will win.
“Well for these presidential and legislative elections we can see that it is going well unlike other years because we are in special circumstances. So we hope that it continues to go well and that it finishes well.”