Yesterday, Burkina Faso suffered its second military coup in less than a year. Just a few weeks before scheduled national elections, members of the presidential guard (or RSP, per its French initials) arrested the interim president and prime minister and dissolved the government those men led. According to Reuters:
“The patriotic forces, grouped together in the National Council for Democracy, have decided today to put an end to the deviant transitional regime,” the military official said on RTB state television.
“The transition has progressively distanced itself from the objectives of refounding our democracy,” he said, adding that a revision of the electoral law that blocked supporters of Compaore from running in the planned Oct. 11 had “created divisions and frustrations amongst the people.”
My knowledge of politics in Burkina Faso is shallow, but if I had to guess why this coup happened now, this, also from Reuters, is what I would spotlight:
Burkina Faso’s powerful presidential guard should be dismantled, according to a commission charged with proposing reforms…
In a report submitted to Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida, himself a former commander in the RSP, the national reconciliation and reform commission on Monday described the 1,200 troop strong unit as “an army within an army”.
It called for the regiment to be broken up and its members redeployed within the framework of a broader reform of the military.
In a July post, I spotlighted regional experts’ concerns about another coup by Burkina Faso’s presidential guard, observing how those concerns encapsulated the dilemma that confronts civilian politicians who wish to deepen democracy—or, more cynically, their own power—by strengthening their control over the military. Stronger civilian control means fewer military prerogatives, and as a general rule, political actors prefer not to cede power. I wonder if the RSP saw that reform commission’s report as a harbinger of its fate under the next batch of elected civilian leaders and decided to act now, against the shallow-rooted interim government.
In this year’s statistical assessments of coup risk, Burkina Faso ranked fifth in the world, in no small part because of the coup it suffered last year. As I discussed in a blog post a few years ago, when Mali got hit by its second coup in a 10-month span, coup attempts amplify uncertainty in ways that can keep a country on edge for years. Whether or not the latest coup attempt sticks and without touching the forecasting algorithm, I can tell you that Burkina Faso will land near the top of the global list in next year’s statistical assessments of coup risk, too.
Dart-Throwing Chimp 
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