– ‘Burkina’s Black Spring’ –
The legislature had been due to examine a proposed amendment that would allow Compaore, who took power in a coup in 1987, to run for re-election in November next year.
“October 30 is Burkina Faso’s Black Spring, like the Arab Spring,” said Emile Pargui Pare, an official from the Movement of People for Progress (MPP), a young and influential opposition party.
Government spokesman Alain Edouard Traore issued a statement Wednesday hailing the “vitality” of Burkina Faso’s democracy despite what he termed anti-government “misbehaviour”.
Compaore’s bid to cling to power has angered the opposition and much of the public, including many young people in a country where 60 percent of the population of almost 17 million is under 25.
Many have spent their entire lives under the leadership of one man and – with the poor former French colony stagnating at 183rd out of 186 countries on the UN human development index – many have had enough.
The situation is being closely watched across Africa where at least four heads of state are preparing or considering similar changes to stay in power, from Burundi to Benin and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Compaore was only 36 when he seized power in the coup in which his former friend and one of Africa’s most loved leaders, Thomas Sankara, was ousted and assassinated.
The 63-year-old has remained in power since then, re-elected president four times since 1991 – to two seven-year and two five-year terms.
In 2005, constitutional limits were introduced and Compaore is coming to the end of his second five-year term.
The opposition fears the planned new rules would enable Compaore to seek re-election not just once, but three more times, paving the way for up to 15 more years in power.
The third largest party in parliament had said at the weekend it would back the amendment, which would have given the ruling party the two-thirds majority needed to make the change without resorting to a referendum as first promised.
Protesters have erected barricades and burned tyres in the capital since the proposal was announced on October 21.
Known in colonial times as Upper Volta, the landlocked country became independent from France in 1960 and its name was changed to Burkina Faso (“the land of upright men”) in 1984.
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