Ouagadougou, Oct 14 (AFP/APP):Captain Ibrahim Traore, who led the latest coup in Burkina Faso, was on Friday named interim president until elections are held in July 2024, two members of the ruling junta told AFP.
“Captain Traore has just been unanimously designated president of the transition (government) by the national forum,” a member of the West African nation’s junta said. Another junta member confirmed the news.
Some 300 delegates from political parties, social and religious groups, security forces, unions as well as people displaced by militant violence had gathered Friday to discuss the country’s future at a national forum in the capital Ouagadougou.
It adopted article five of a “transition charter” which stipulates that the head of the party of the ruling junta assumes the positions of transition president, head of state and supreme chief of the national armed forces, the two sources said.
Traore has been head of the Patriotic Movement for Preservation and Restoration (MPSR) — as the junta chose to call itself — since the September 30 coup.
The forum also adopted an article in the charter which says the transition president’s mandate ends with the investiture of the president resulting from elections planned in 2024.
It adds that the transition president is not eligible to stand in presidential, legislative and local elections, organised to end the transition period.
Traore, 34, leading disgruntled junior officers, forced out Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.
Damiba had seized power only in January, toppling Burkina’s last elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
The two coups were rooted in unrest within army ranks over the militant insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
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