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The parties that back the president in Burkina Faso on Tuesday called for “respect for the results” of the presidential and parliamentary elections after the opposition threatened to reject them.
The Alliance of Presidential Majority Parties (APMP) urged all parties to respect the outcome of Sunday’s elections in the West African country, lawyer Benewende Sankara told reporters in Ouagadougou.
Sankara also asked the candidates to accept whatever challenges they might have with “the right structures” if they were to contest the vote.
When the electoral commission began publishing the initial results of the poll on Monday, opposition parties said that the presidential and parliamentary figures were “peppered with fraud” and threatened “not to accept results marred by irregularities.”
The day before the elections, the opposition had already said that a “massive fraud” was being prepared, bringing a legal case against unknown persons.
The opposition’s specific complaints were the late opening or non-opening of some polling stations, the unprotected transportation of ballot boxes, the lack of sufficient material and personnel in charge of voting, and what they said were arbitrary changes in the mapping of the polling stations. electoral.
But in his remarks on Tuesday, Sankara responded: “The APMP considers that the flaws and inadequacies that marred the voting process can in no way reflect any kind of intention to undermine the sincerity of the election.
An electoral commission official holds a ballot during the counting of votes at a polling station during the Burkina Faso presidential and legislative elections on November 22, 2020 in Ouagadougou. By OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT (AFP / Archive) “The reported failures harm all candidates and competing political parties and all in the same way.
“The reported failures, while regrettable, are not on a scale that has a significant impact on the outcome of the vote,” he added.
The presidential clan has promised a first-round victory for incumbent President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, as in 2015, in an election that was considered the most open race in Burkina history, which has also seen multiple coups.
Kabore would thus avoid a second round of voting in which he would oppose a single candidate backed by a united opposition.
Security was tight for Sunday’s vote in a nation experiencing its darkest hours since independence due to attacks by jihadist groups that have killed at least 1,200 people over five years.
Due to the unrest, elections were not held in at least one fifth of the territory.
