(3 minutes read)
· Burkinabe are eagerly awaiting results of Sunday’s presidential elections
· The reports coming from there suggest that thousands of voters were disenfranchised in the general elections on the ground that they posed security threats
· The total votes polled were only one-fifth of the number of eligible voters.
Burkinabe are eagerly awaiting results of Sunday’s presidential elections. The reports coming from there suggest that thousands of voters were disenfranchised in the general elections on the ground that they posed security threats. The total votes polled was only one-fifth of the number of eligible voters. As reported by www.trendsnafrica.com yesterday, President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré is expected to be re-elected. There were complaints that there was heavy troop deployment during the Election Day, which the opposition leaders allege was purposely done by Kabore to get traction in the election by scaring the voters.
The election analysts predict that President Kaboré was in the lead and would win in the first round. That many feel augurs well otherwise the election drill has to start again, if none of the candidates fails to get 50% of the votes polled. This can lead to further disturbances in the civic life. The West African country has been undergoing a lot of disturbances in recent times, which have hugely affected the people’s life.
The Independent Electoral Commission revealed that a number of polling stations for the presidential vote had been closed after receiving threats for disturbing the polling processes. It is claimed that between 300,000 and 350,000 of about 6.5 million voters had not cast their ballots due to security threats,
Some 1200 people died since 2015 in the continued violence and disturbances in the country. The security crisis, ignited by the presence of the regional offshoots of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State groups, dominated the campaign in the landlocked West African country. Most of the 12 opposition candidates running against Kaboré highlighted in the election campaign that he failed to stem the bloodshed. Kabore, if he retains the post, it could be because of the development works particularly in the field of building infrastructure that he had undertaken in the last five years.
