The president of the Union for Progress and Change (UPC), the main opposition party in Burkina Faso, Zephirin Diabré, as well as the former Prime Minister Isaac Zida, presented Friday to the Independent National Electoral Commission (Ceni) their candidacy for the presidential election of November 22.
The famous lawyer Ambroise Farama also submitted his case at the end of the day.
Read also: Presidential election in Burkina: three former relatives of Compaoré submit their candidacies
In the 2015 ballot, Zephirin Diabré, 61, came second with 29.65% of the vote, beaten by current president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, who is seeking a second term and whose record he criticized.
“
Five years of managing the MPP (People's Movement for Progress, President Kaboré's party) have brought Burkina Faso to the brink of chaos.
We have an obligation to save it today because that is what it is about, ”
he said.
Former minister of Blaise Compaoré in the 1990s, Diabré went into the opposition in 2011. A change of course three years before the fall of the former president, driven out by a popular insurrection at the end of 2014, after 27 years in power.
Former relatives of Compaoré candidates
The supporters of ex-Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida, in exile in Canada, also submitted his candidacy, assuring that he would be back for the election campaign.
“This country not only needs justice and reconciliation, but above all this country needs love because it is in hearts that conflicts are born.
The Burkinabè need fraternity in order to be able to face a certain number of challenges which beset the country ”,
declared the president of the Patriotic Movement for Salvation (MPS), Augustin Loada, upon leaving the Ceni.
In exile in Canada since 2016, Yacouba Isaac Zida, who is the MPS candidate and whose return has been announced several times by his supporters, is the target of an arrest warrant for
"desertion in peacetime and refusal to obey ".
At the time lieutenant-colonel, Zida seized power on November 1, 2014, the day after the fall of Blaise Compaoré.
After strong pressure from political parties, civil society and the international community, he ceded power after three weeks to Michel Kafando, a retired diplomat, who immediately appointed him prime minister in a transitional government. .
Another candidate to have submitted his candidacy on Friday, Me Farama declared:
“For 17 years, I worked alongside the widow and the orphan, but I understood that this legal assistance was not sufficient to save all the Burkinabè people.
This is why I decided to let go of the bar to rise above the bar to save all the Burkinabè ”.
Four other postulants including Ablassé Ouedraogo, already a candidate in 2015, are expected at the Ceni which receives the applications until midnight.
The Constitutional Council then has until October 10 to give the list of validated candidatures.
Among the candidates who have already applied for the presidential election are many former members of the Compaoré regime: the former Prime Minister Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, Gilbert Noël Ouédraogo, leader of a party formerly allied with Compaoré, or even Eddie Komboïgo, the president of the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP), the former ruling party.
The other prominent candidates are Tahirou Barry, 3rd in the presidential election in 2015, minister who resigned from the first government of Kaboré, and the lawyer Abdoulaye Soma.
At the beginning of August, several opposition political groups, including the MPS and the UPC, signed an agreement to support, in the event of a second round, the candidate who won in the first round.
