Burkina Faso

It does not look the recent revolution in Burkina Faso will progress along the lines of the one led by Thomas Sankara from 1983 to 1987. Indeed the result is shaping up to look nothing like Sankara's revolution. Instead a provisional military government has replaced Campaore. The international community including the existing governments in Africa all seem to be hoping for a transition in a few weeks to put a new civilian government in power and then sometime later elections. Such a government will have the legitimacy of democratic elections and the support of France, the US, ECOWAS, and the AU. It will also probably as a result of the influence of these outside powers continue the same neo-liberal economic and social policies of the Campaore regime and repudiation of the policies of Sankara. The main difference will be that the government instituting these identical policies will have been elected rather than imposed by military force. This difference in the procedure of how governments are formed has been fetishized in recent decades at the expense of the actual policies pursued by these governments. Elections have replaced human, social, and economic rights as the highest value supported by the international community in places like Africa.