Burkina Faso’s military regime, which has been in power since a coup in 2022, announced that it will extend its rule for an additional five years.
This decision was made during national consultations held on Saturday, according to Colonel Moussa Diallo, the chairman of the organising committee for the national dialogue process.
“The duration of the transition is fixed at 60 months from July 2, 2024,” Diallo stated after the discussions. He also noted that coup leader and acting president Ibrahim Traore would be eligible to run in elections at the end of this transition period.
The national dialogue, initially planned as a two-day event, began earlier on Saturday with the aim of outlining a path back to civilian governance for Burkina Faso, which has been plagued by jihadist violence.
Since 2022, the army has controlled Burkina Faso, conducting two coups that it justified largely due to ongoing security issues. Jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have been waging an insurgency since 2015, resulting in thousands of deaths and millions of displacements.
The initial national dialogue led to the adoption of a charter that established Traore as president and created a government and legislative assembly. Under the new charter agreed upon on Saturday, quotas would no longer be used to allocate assembly seats to members of traditional parties. Instead, “patriotism” would be the sole criterion for selecting deputies.
Originally, the charter set the transition period to civilian rule at 21 months, with the deadline expiring on July 1. However, Traore had repeatedly indicated that holding elections would be challenging due to the precarious security situation.
The weekend’s talks included representatives from civil society, the security and defence forces, and lawmakers from the transitional assembly. However, most political parties chose to boycott the discussions.
