People in Burkina Faso should forget about democracy as it is “not for us”, the military president, Ibrahim Traoré, told the country’s state broadcaster.
Traoré took power in a coup in September 2022, toppling another junta that had taken power just nine months earlier. He has since stifled opposition and in January banned political parties outright.
A transition to democracy had originally been planned for 2024, but that year the junta extended Traoré’s rule until 2029.
“We’re not even talking about elections, first of all … People need to forget about the question of democracy … We must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us,” Traoré said in an interview on Thursday with the state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB).
Democracy was “false”, the 37-year-old said, adding: “Democracy, we kill children. Democracy, we drop bombs, we kill women, we destroy hospitals, we kill civilian population. Is that democracy?”
Traoré has won fans across Africa with anti-French and anti-western rhetoric that often invokes the legacy of the revolutionary Burkinabé leader Thomas Sankara. Sankara, a Marxist, was president of Burkina Faso, which he renamed from Upper Volta, from 1983 until his assassination in 1987.
Traoré is battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives since 2014 and had displaced 2.1 million people, about 9% of the population, when official data was last released three years ago.
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