Voters voted in Burkina Faso on Sunday to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, which have been marred by ongoing violence in the West African landlocked nation.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore has promised to secure the country and is fighting for another five years in power against twelve other candidates.
Kabore is expected to win, but the opposition are hoping to split the vote, depriving him of the 51 percent support needed to win the first round overall. It is then planned to form a coalition behind the strongest opposition candidate for the second round of elections.
The campaigns ran alongside ongoing bloodshed and there was widespread fear of attack by armed groups on election day.
Fourteen soldiers were killed in an ambush in the north alleged by ISIL (ISIS) earlier this month. This was one of the deadliest attacks on the military in five years of the rebellion.
During the presidential and parliamentary elections in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, people stand in line at a polling station [Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]As in the neighboring Sahel states of Mali and Niger, violence in the north is intertwined with clashes between ethnic groups.
The Fulani community has been particularly recruited by militants and attacks regularly trigger reprisals and continue the cycle of violence.
Humanitarian groups have condemned massacres of Fulani civilians by pro-government militias or the army.
“Massive Fraud”
The president’s two main challengers are 2015 runner-up, veteran opposition leader Zephirin Diabre, and Eddie Komboigo, who represents former President Blaise Compaore’s party.
Compaore, who was overthrown by a popular uprising in 2014 after 27 years in power, is now in exile.
Presidential candidate Zephirin Diabre will vote at a polling station in Ouagadougou during the presidential and parliamentary elections [Anne Mimault/Reuters]Diabre told reporters on Saturday that “there is a huge operation being organized by those in power to carry out a massive fraud” to give Kabore a first-round victory.
“We will not accept results that are affected by irregularities,” added Diabre, who was surrounded by five of the eleven other opposition candidates, including Komboigo, at a press conference.
According to Codel, a local election-focused organization, crisis rooms have been set up across the city where organizations can monitor voting for irregularities, voter suppression and violence.
“Vote for change in this country”
Dozens of people lined up at polling stations in the capital, Ouagadougou, before sunrise on Sunday.
Oumar Zorome, 55, was the first to vote in the Patte D’Oie district and supports Kabore, who built roads and is not responsible for the country’s insecurity struggles.
“I am voting for the change that has already taken place in this country to continue,” he said.
One voter shows another how to cast her vote at a polling station during the presidential and parliamentary elections in Ouagadougou [Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]Voting also began in violent regions of the country where officials were unsure a few weeks ago whether a vote would be possible.
In Barsalogho, in the country’s Center North region, an official said there were more than 60 people in line when the polls opened with added security.
“I’m surprised. I didn’t think we could vote, but things have been calm so far,” Saidou Wily, a government official in Barsalogho, told The Associated Press.
Al-Qaeda-ISIL-related violence has displaced more than a million people and cut off parts of the country, leaving at least 166,000 new voters unable to register, according to election officials.
Results are expected in the next few days.
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