Burkina Faso’s incumbent president wins election with 57.87%

Burkina Faso’s incumbent president Roch Kabore has won the election with 57.87 per cent of votes, according to the election body Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday.

Having won more than 50 per cent of the total ballots cast, Kabore has secured enough votes to avoid a second round.

Some analysts had expected a closer contest on Sunday between Kabore, who was elected president of Burkina Faso in 2015, and his main rivals, who argued he had failed to contain jihadist and ethnic violence that forced one million people to flee their homes during his first term.

Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections were held in the shadow of violence, with a surge in attacks,

Once perceived as a stable West African nation, Burkina Faso’s fate is now closely tied with that of the wider Sahel region, where 5,000 French troops are deployed under Operation Barkhane, cooperating with a fledgling European Operation Takuba force.

The presidential election results read out by the election commission on Thursday showed Kaboré taking 57.87 per cent of the vote while his two closest rivals, Zephirin Diabre and Eddie Komboigo, got 12.46 per cent and 15.48 per cent, respectively.

Kaboré’s opponents have raised concerns about the validity of the vote count.

But the electoral commission has dismissed those and an international observer mission gave the election a mostly clean bill of health.