Burkina Faso President Says Country Should ‘forget The Issue Of Democracy’

Burkina Faso’s president said Thursday evening in an interview aired on state TV that the country should “forget the issue of democracy,” saying also that “democracy kills” and is “slavery”. “We are focused on our conquest, on our refoundation and on the revolution,” said President Ibrahim Traore, just two months after the country dissolved all of its political parties. After taking power in a 2022 military coup, Traore promised to hold elections by 2024 or even earlier. Burkina Faso’s 2022 coup followed a 2020 military takeover in Mali, and was followed by the 2023 coup in neighbouring Niger. The three countries have now withdrawn from the regional bloc ECOWAS and formed their own confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States. Military governments in the Sahel gained backing from the population by promising to rid the countries of insecurity, as all three of them battled years-long Islamist insurgencies. Though France intervened in Mali in 2012 to stop al-Qaeda linked militants from advancing on the capital, the insurgency continued and spread into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. The military junta in Burkina Faso has failed to provide the stability it promised. According to conservative estimates, more than 60% of the country is now outside of government control, more than 2.1 million people have lost their homes and almost 6.5 million need humanitarian aid to survive. Conflict monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data estimates that at least 10,600 civilians have been killed since 2016.