Burkina Faso’s military junta restores the Constitution and ratifies its leader as transitional president

MADRID, Jan. 31 (Royals Blue) –

The military junta that took power a week ago in Burkina Faso has restored practically all of the Constitution on Monday, suspended after the coup, and has announced the dismissal of the Chief of the Army General Staff, Gilbert Ouédraogo, to ratify as president of transition to its leader, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.

This has been confirmed by Lieutenant Colonel Cyprien Kaboré, spokesman for the Patriotic Movement for Salvation and Restoration (MPSR), which has announced the publication of the Fundamental Act to govern the management of state power pending the adoption of a transitory charter.

In declarations before the state television, Kaboré has confirmed that the Magna Carta has been restituted with the exception of those articles that question the dispositions of the Fundamental Act. The measure has been taken after meeting this Monday with a joint delegation from the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the UN.

Thus, the MPSR has indicated that this will guarantee the “continuity of the State pending the installation of the relevant transitional bodies”, as indicated in the document, which consists of 37 articles.

“The MPSR is the central body to define and guide the security, economic, social, development and restoration of territorial integrity policy” of the country, says the text, which states that the act in question “lifts the suspension of the Constitution “.

In this sense, he points out that “the president of Burkina Faso and the Supreme Chief of the Armed Forces” is the president of the MPSR. In addition, it guarantees judicial independence and the presumption of innocence, as well as the fundamental freedoms contained in the Constitution, especially those of free movement and freedom of expression and the press.

The decree also ends all functions of Ouédraogo in a country hit since 2015 by increasingly frequent attacks by jihadist groups, a spike in violence that the now deposed president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré would not have known how to face.

The announcement of the restoration of the Constitution comes after the African Union (AU) announced its decision to suspend Burkina Faso’s membership of the bloc in response to the January 24 military coup.

The coup d’état, led by Damiba, came after a military mutiny in protest against insecurity and the lack of means to deal with jihadism, which is why the soldiers demanded the resignation of Kaboré and other high-ranking members of the security forces. security.

The coup took place almost two weeks after the authorities announced the arrest of eight soldiers, including a commander, in connection with an alleged plot to “destabilize” the country’s institutions.