official investiture ceremony of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba

Published on : 02/03/2022 – 14:06Modified : 02/03/2022 – 14:17

Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was sworn in as president on Wednesday morning. The leader of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration, who seized power in a coup on January 24, had already been declared president in February by the Constitutional Council. Twenty-four hours following the adoption of a transition charter, the official ceremony of his investiture was therefore organized. A very simple ceremony.

with our special correspondent in Ouagadougou, Gaelle Laleix

The ceremony, very sober, was held in the banquet hall of Ouaga 2000. The room, which for months has hosted the military tribunal for the trial of the assassins of Thomas Sankara, was fitted out for the occasion and adorned with the colors national flags of Burkina, green and red. On the walls, maps of the country surrounded by protective hands.

There were around 700 guests present, not foreign heads of state, but delegations of diplomats and above all representatives of constituted bodies: political parties, trade unions, youth and women’s movements or even religious and community leaders.

During this ceremony, the new president remained silent… A will displayed from the start and the investiture was short. the lieutenant-colonel Damiba received from the Grand Master of the Orders of Burkina the necklace which symbolizes the presidency… Then the national anthem rang out and following congratulations the curtain fell.

We are therefore far from the last presidential investiture: in December 2020, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré had chosen the Sports Palace for the event and a dozen African heads of state had moved. “But this was an elected president! recalls an observer of Burkinabe political life.

For some, Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba would have chosen sobriety, aware of the exceptional nature of his regime. By signing the Transitional Charter on Monday, he pledged not to run in the presidential election, which will end this special term.

► Read also : in Burkina Faso, the junta places its men at the head of the security forces

There was no speaking out and that’s a very good thing, said Auguste Mohamed Koumsongovo, president of the organization Sauvons le Burkina. The time is no longer for words, place for action, he concluded.