Biographie de Blaze Compaoré (document en anglais)

Blaise Compaoré, (born Feb. 3, 1951, Ouagadougou, Upper Volta, French West Africa [now in Burkina Faso]), military leader and politician who ruled Burkina Faso from 1987, seizing power following a coup.

Compaoré was born into a family of the Mossi ethnic group, one of the dominant ethnic groups in Upper Volta, and was raised in the town of Ziniaré, near Ouagadougou. He attended military college in Yaoundé, Camer., and received paracommando training in Rabat, Mor. From 1978 to 1981 he served as head of section and later company commander in an Upper Volta paracommando regiment. Compaoré was given charge of the national commando training centre at Po in 1981. He became deeply embroiled in national politics in 1982 when his friend and colleague, Capt. Thomas Sankara, resigned from his government post to protest policy decisions. A year later, when another power struggle saw Sankara put in prison, Compaoré mustered the support of the commando unit at Po and, with Ghanian and Libyan help, led a coup on Aug. 4, 1983, that installed Sankara as head of state. Along with Compaoré and Sankara, two other military officers—Comdt. Jean-Baptiste Lingani and Capt. Henri Zongo—helped organize the coup and the resulting regime, and all held positions of leadership in the country. Compaoré served as minister of state at the presidency (1983–87), essentially making him second in command in the regime, and also as minister of state for justice (1985–87).

Personally quiet and self-effacing, Compaoré seemed content to leave the public business of politics in Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984) to the more charismatic Sankara and the other two coup organizers. That changed in 1987, when disagreements over security and other strategic issues reportedly precipitated an October 15 coup, led by Compaoré, Zongo, and Lingani, that brought Compaoré to power. Sankara was killed during the takeover, and Compaoré, who professed not to have planned the coup with much advance notice, was said to have been devastated by the unexpected death of his friend.

Compaoré served as the head of state in the new regime, which focused on economic liberalization and, later, limited democratic reform. Zongo and Lingani held prominent positions in the regime until 1989, when, after disagreeing with Compaoré over economic issues, they were accused of plotting against him and were subsequently executed, leaving Compaoré free to follow his own agenda. Multiparty politics resumed with the promulgation of a new constitution in 1991, and a presidential election was held later that year. Compaoré, who had resigned from the military in order to run for president as a civilian, was elected to a seven-year term. He had run unopposed, however, because opposition candidates, who were protesting Compaoré’s refusal to hold a national conference on political reform, boycotted the election. He was reelected in 1998 in an election that was again boycotted, although this time by only the major opposition candidates; he was also reelected in 2005 and 2010.

In addition to the election boycotts in 1991 and 1998, Compaoré faced other controversy and popular unrest. His eligibility to stand in the 2005 election was disputed by opposition parties, who cited the passage of a constitutional amendment in April 2000 that reduced a president’s term to five years and stipulated that it was renewable only once.

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