Burkina Faso
Electoral Institution
The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI)
Population:
20 738 058
Eligible Voting Population:
5 517 015
Minimum Voter's Age:
18
Political Regime
Burkina Faso has a multi-party system operating in a semi-presidential republic, whereby the Prime Minister is the head of government. The President of Faso is elected by a two-round majority uninominal ballot for a five-year term renewable once. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of the votes cast in the first round shall be elected. Failing this, a second round is be held between the two candidates who came first, and the candidate receiving the most votes shall be declared elected. Burkina Faso has a unicameral parliament, the National Assembly, whose 127 members are elected for a five-year term by multi-member proportional representation with a closed list. Of this total, 111 seats are distributed in 45 multi-member constituencies ranging from two to nine seats, while the remaining 16 are filled in a single national constituency.
Number of Political Parties:
13 regularly registered (Ministry of Interior February 2020)
Number of Election Held
General elections : 8 (1965, 1978, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020) Parliamentary elections : 11 (1959, 1965, 1970, 1978, 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2020) Municipal elections : 3 (1965, 2006, 2016)
Referendum : 4 (1959, 1970, 1977, 1991)
When are the Next Elections?
The country will hold both legislative and presidential election on the 22nd November 2020
The Republic of Upper Volta was declared independence on 5 August 1960. It became Burkina Faso under the initiative and leadership of Thomas Sankara. In 1984, the first president, Maurice Yaméogo, was the leader of the Voltaic Democratic Union (UDV). The 1960 constitution provided for election of a President and a National Assembly for 5-year terms. Soon after coming to power, in 1960, Yaméogo banned all political parties other than the UDV. Yaméogo's government was viewed as corrupt and said to perpetuate neo-colonialism by favoring French political and economic interests which had allowed politicians to enrich themselves but not the nation's peasants or small class of urban workers. Blaise Compaoré took power after the 1987 coup in which his predecessor Sankara was killed. He was elected President in 1991, in an election that was boycotted by the opposition, and re-elected in 1998, 2005, and 2010. He was ejected from the presidency in 2015 during the political crisis. The National Transitional Council (CNT) of Burkina Faso voted on April 7, 2015 a new electoral code which, through its article 135, indirectly prohibits supporters of former president Blaise Compaoré from running in the next elections and, in particular, in the presidential election of October 2015. The current president is Roch Marc Christian Kaboré who was elected in 2015.