Blaise Compaoré

Mediators can be seen as the carriers of a particular kind of sovereignty given the nature of their intervention and the requirement—manifest in the Ivoirian case—for a capacity for creativity and improvisation. This particular kind of sovereignty is built and deployed, and it is informed by mediators’ capacity to tap into different registers of legitimacy and a capacity to (re)interpret the terms of mediation mandates. This chapter examines mediation processes in Côte d’Ivoire between the period of 2002 and 2011. It specifically analyzes the framework that enabled Blaise Compaoré to broker a peace deal in 2007—a decisive moment that paved the way for “postconflict” elections. A characteristic of the Ivoirian conflict is the sheer extent of external intervention(ism) in the various mediations, the conflict resolution strategies, and the elaboration of a working legal and institutional framework to carry and conclude these processes.

In the often troubled politics of West Africa, Blaise Compaoré, the former president of Burkina Faso, is a quaint figure, almost of another era. Yet with all he has experienced over a quarter century of the region’s upheavals, he is also very much a man of his time, politically astute, and a fine strategist when it comes to preserving his friendships with powerful countries and leaders whose backing has provided immunity of sorts for his alleged crimes. Compaoré has always been equally keen on keeping a clean image as a peacemaker, given the intolerable association of his name and career with a bloody 1983 coup that cost the life of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary pan-African figure. This paper is not, however, focused on Compaoré’s political career, and it is not a diatribe meant to support or amplify common critiques of his political activism or his perceived destructive practices. The popular insurgency of October 2014 that resulted in the resignation of the long-serving president gives a good measure of popular sentiment on Compaoré’s model of governance and moral ethics more emphatically than any speculative account on political rule in Burkina Faso.

In October 2014, a popular uprising led to the fall of a regime, that of President of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaoré, in power for 27 years. Commentators were likely to interpret these events as the rise of « civil society organizations », the opposition parties and even trade unions. For some observers, the internal divisions in the presidential party, its disintegration, where one of the major causes of the fall of the president. Our own observations on the field led us to shed a light on one of the aspects of this event which seems to be neglected in many analysis. It is my hypothesis indeed that this historic event would not have been possible without the emergence from below of a common platform for moral claims. The latter are based on a certain idea of what the national ethos and ethics are, those of Burkina Faso, literally the « Country of Honest Men ». Their conversion into a political langage and popular mode of action is at the heart of this paper.

Le 30 octobre 2014, à l’issue de quatre jours de mobilisation nationale, le président Blaise Compaoré a été contraint de démissionner. Deux semaines de négociations ont ensuite permis à l’armée, à l’opposition politique et à la société civile de s’entendre sur l’établissement d’une charte de transition ainsi que sur la nomination de l’ancien diplomate Michel Kafando à la tête du gouvernement intérimaire, jusqu’au scrutin présidentiel prévu pour le mois de novembre 2015. Plus qu’une crise politique conjoncturelle, cette période de mobilisation sociale renvoie à des dynamiques de contestation déjà anciennes et relevant de revendications socio-économiques profondément ancrées dans la société burkinabée. Porteuse de la mobilisation, la jeunesse dénonce notamment l’existence d’une fracture générationnelle, entrainée par la mainmise sur le pays des élites issues du coup d’État de 1987, ainsi que la récupération de la « révolution burkinabée » par les anciens cadres du régime.

Koudougou, principale commune d’opposition du Burkina Faso, a pour réputation d’être une ville rebelle. Pourtant, lors de l’élection présidentielle de novembre 2005, les votes en faveur de Blaise Compaoré ont été aussi nombreux qu’ailleurs. L’évolution historique de la ville, le pouvoir du président et les ambiguïtés de l’opposition permettent d’éclairer ce choix et de mieux comprendre l’argumentation populaire qui le légitime.

The town of Koudougou, the largest with an opposition municipal council in Burkina Faso, has a reputation for rebellion. However, at the presidential election of 2005, Koudougou voted in favour of the president no less than the rest of the country. The history of the city, the power of the president and the ambiguities of the opposition must take into account this vote and its popular justifications.

Mediators can be seen as the carriers of a particular kind of sovereignty given the nature of their intervention and the requirement—manifest in the Ivoirian case—for a capacity for creativity and improvisation. This particular kind of sovereignty is built and deployed, and it is informed by mediators’ capacity to tap into different registers of legitimacy and a capacity to (re)interpret the terms of mediation mandates. This chapter examines mediation processes in Côte d’Ivoire between the period of 2002 and 2011. It specifically analyzes the framework that enabled Blaise Compaoré to broker a peace deal in 2007—a decisive moment that paved the way for “postconflict” elections. A characteristic of the Ivoirian conflict is the sheer extent of external intervention(ism) in the various mediations, the conflict resolution strategies, and the elaboration of a working legal and institutional framework to carry and conclude these processes.