President Blaise Compaoré of the Republic of Burkina Faso

Compaoré was born, on February 3, 195, in Ziniaré, 34 km from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, (named at that time Upper Volta). Compaoré completed his secondary education in 1972 and in the following year September 1973 he went on to join the military - Military academy Inter-arm Cameroon (EMIAC).

Between 1975 -1977 he attended the School of Infantry of Montpellier (France). It was at in a military training center in Morocco that Compaoré met his predecessor the late president of Burkina Faso Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara in 1976 . Compaoré later on 1980 served under the late President Thomas Sankara as Minister of State.

Compaoré became president of Burkina on October 15, 1987 in a bloody coup that killed Sankara. Compaoré described the killing of Sankara as an "accident", however this claim is widely disputed. Upon taking the presidency, he reverted many of the policies of Sankara, claiming that his policy was a "rectification" of the Burkinabé revolution. Blaise Campaore's liability in connection with the assassination of former President has been the object of the first complaint Against Burkina Faso, lodged by Mariam Sankara, Thomas Sankara's widow. In April 2006, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a damning condemnation of Burkina Faso's failure to investigate the circumstance of Thomas Sankara's death.

With Compaoré alone at the helm, a democratic constitution was approved by referendum in 1991. In December 1991, Compaoré was elected President, running unopposed after the opposition boycotted the election. The opposition did participate in the following year's legislative elections, in which the ruling party won a majority of seats.

The government of the Fourth Republic includes a strong presidency, a prime minister, a Council of Ministers presided over by the president, a unicameral National Assembly, and the judiciary. The legislature and judiciary are nominally independent but remain susceptible to executive influence.

Burkina held multiparty municipal elections in 1995 and 2000 and legislative elections in 1997 and 2002. Balloting was considered largely free and fair in all elections. The Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP), the governing party, won overwhelming majorities in all the elections until the 2002 legislative election, where the CDP won with a small majority of the 111 seats. The opposition made large gains in the 2002 elections.

Compaoré won the November 1998 presidential election for a second 7-year term against two minor-party candidates. But within weeks of Compaoré's victory the domestic opposition took to the streets to protest the December 13, 1998 murder of leading independent journalist Norbert Zongo, whose investigations of the death of the President's brother's chauffeur suggested involvement of the Compaoré family.

The opposition Collective Against Impunity--led by human rights activist Halidou Ouedraogo and including opposition political parties of Prof. Joseph Ki-Zerbo and (for a while) Hermann Yameogo, son of the first President--challenged Compaoré and his government to bring Zongo's murderers to justice and make political reforms. The Zongo killings still resonate in Burkina politics, though not as strongly as in the past. There has been no significant progress on the investigation of the case.

Compaoré was re-elected to the presidency for a 5-year term in November 2005. The current cabinet is dominated by Compaoré and the CDP. Given the fragile roots of democratic institutions, constitutional checks and balances are seldom effective in practice. The constitution was amended in 2000 to limit the president to a 5-year term, renewable once, beginning with the November 2005 election. The amendment is controversial because it did not make any mention of retroactivity, meaning that President Compaoré's eligibility to present himself for the 2005 presidential election is a matter of debate. The Constitutional Court ruled in October 2005 that the amendment was not retroactive, and Compaoré went on to win the November 2005 presidential election defeating 12 opponents and winning with over 80% of the votes. It is reported that early on in the race, 16 opposition parties announced a coalition to unseat the President, ultimately nobody wanted to give up their spot in the race to another leader in the coalition, and the pact fell through. International and national electoral observers mostly believed that the election was fair.