Compaoré met yesterday with officers from the military as well as officials from the justice system. It's been reported that the military was satisfied with the conversation. A participant in the meeting suggested the recents events in Burkina have been a way for the population to express dissatisfaction that has built up over a number of years.
Following the meeting, a young military had this to say:
"Be assured, from today on it's done. Here we are human, and I believe that we (as humans) make errors. Today, we are proud to be here. I believe that this is an incident that has come about. Everyone has taken it upon themselves to assured there won't be more incidents. We [the military] is here for the population. We are very please to have met with the president of Burkina. I am almost thirty, and I have never met my president face to face. I am very proud. I told him what I think...after what he told us we are all happy."
Compaoré had this to say following the meetings:
"I am very satisfied, because I had the occasion, to a large extent, to mention the concerns that are essentiel, to reinforce command in the army but also to help their working conditions and the work of the soldiers."
Despite the seemingly successful meetings yesterday, Burkina's opposition parties are calling for Compaoré to resign. They suggest he has failed to live up to his constitutional responsibilities of acting as chief of the military and is consequently no longer able to confront the issues facing Burkina. Opposition leader (and unsuccessful Presidential candidate for the November 2010 elections) Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara, is quoted as saying "[Blaise Compaoré is] definitely and absolutely hindered from fulfilling his role". It appears politicians are not the only ones calling for Blaise to resign as high school students in Tenkodogo have adopted "Blaise dehors" or "Out Blaise" as their protest slogan. It remains unclear to what extent protests in Tenkodogo continue.
For the better part of the past week rumours have surfaced, nearly daily, that Compaoré has fallen victim of a coup d'etat. Most recently these reports have argued son of late president Thomas Sankara has taken over. These claims appear totally unsubstantiated.
In other news, Air France and Delta Air are in a process of restructuring their flight schedules to comply with the newly implemented curfew. This has resulted in cancelled flights for Air France. And it is reported that the situation at the Ouagadougou airport is nothing but confusing and online flight information (especially Flight Stats) seems to have not yet been properly adjusted.
2 comments:
We have a team of Americans there doing a medical mission and they landed today without incident. I pray they are everyone else will be fine.
I'll add them to my prayer list. I have heard mostly that the situation is concerning - but not overall dangerous. Bless the team for doing such important work.
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