Ouagadougou: Sociology student Brahima Sodré defended her Master II on Thursday which addresses, among other things, the socio-political determinants behind the 2016 electoral violence in the rural commune of Saponé.
‘My study started from an observation following the municipal elections of May 2016 where there were several postponements in certain municipalities of Burkina Faso,’ indicated the applicant Brahima Sodré, at the end of training in Master II in sociology. at Joseph Ki-Zerbo University (UJKZ).
For him, 19 municipalities in total, including that of Saponé, were affected by this postponement of local elections, because of disagreements linked either to the legitimacy of the candidates or to their residence status.
Mr. Sodré, who spoke Thursday at the UJKZ of Ouagadougou during his defense, recalled that the municipal council of Saponé was dissolved twice, due to electoral violence and the lack of consensus for the establishment of the executive body of the municipality.
To listen to him, these w
ould be justified by several causes such as the imperfections linked to the organization of the primaries, the choice of candidates at the top of the list and the involvement of certain party leaders in the choice of the candidate to vote.
‘As a sociologist, I said to myself why not conduct research to better understand the way in which socio-political determinants would fuel electoral violence in the rural commune of Saponé,’ he added.
Brahima Sodré says she carried out, from October 6 to 23, 2023, interviews with former municipal councilors from the different political parties who made up the Saponé municipal council and resource people to understand the real progress of the election at the rural commune level. from Saponé.
The applicant noted that the question of the legitimacy of candidates running for municipal elections remains a real problem at the level of several municipalities and that the rural municipality of Saponé was no exception, because this situation gives rise to intra-community conflict
s. parties and even communities.
According to Mr. Sodré, the authorities must review the texts and the electoral code to establish direct suffrage instead of indirect voting, in order to allow populations to directly choose their mayors in the municipalities.
At the end of his Master II defense in sociology, his theme, described as interesting and current, was deemed admissible by the jury.
The dissertation co-director, Assistant Professor in Sociology, Dr. Paul-Marie Moyenga, for his part noted that Brahima Sodré has done excellent work on electoral violence in the context of municipal elections and in particular with regard to concerns the case of the rural commune of Saponé.
According to Dr Moyenga, the jury considered that the student adopted a relevant methodology to identify the theme of his research.
‘We remember that the commune of Saponé, which is his area of ??investigation, was the subject of violence during the last municipal elections, leading to the dissolution of the municipal council,’ he
said.
The Assistant Professor in Sociology also explained that beyond the rural commune of Saponé, a group of communes had been affected by this phenomenon of electoral violence.
‘We are very happy to find a student who goes to information and uses techniques and methods to explore the sociological problem,’ said Dr. Paul-Marie Moyenga.
As a reminder, in 2016, the rural commune of Saponé experienced difficulties in the functioning of its municipal council following electoral violence. In February 2017, the Saponé municipal council was dissolved by the Burkinabè authorities.
Source: Burkina Information Agency