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- Title
Judicial Review and Democratization in Francophone West Africa: The Case of Burkina Faso.
- Authors
Winter, Anne
- Abstract
The Constitutional Council of Burkina Faso has exclusive jurisdiction in constitutional matters. Since 2000 Burkina Faso has a model of centralized review by a specialized Constitutional Council, dispensed separately from, and outside the regular judiciary. It has taken the place of the former Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court within a unified court system. The Council, based largely on the French model, is composed of nine counselors, each appointed for a nine-year, nonrenewable term, as well as a president. According to Title XIV of the Constitution, the Council reviews exclusively the constitutionality of bills, interprets the Constitution, regulates constitutional limitations of competence and stands as an electoral tribunal. In 2012 a series of constitutional amendments was passed in Burkina Faso, changing key features and reforming the Council in theory. Nevertheless, there has been a real doubt about the question whether the Constitutional Council is the key institution of the rule of law for Burkinabé and a contributor to the consolidation of the democratization in the country in the last decade. The existence of the ultra-majority political party of the former president Compaoré detaining the influence on appointing members of the Council, the imbalance of the repartition of competences and the citizens' powerlessness, because the procedure of referring to the Council is only open to political forces, are some reasons. The Council was often considered a plaything of different interests within the political forces in the country and less as an institutional counterweight to arbitrary political power. When attempts to change the constitution to allow for another presidential re-election caused a popular uprising in October 2014, which removed the former president from power, the Constitutional Council played only a marginal role.
- Subjects
BURKINA Faso politics &; government; JUSTICE administration; CONSTITUTIONALISM; DEMOCRATIZATION; POWER (Social sciences)
- Publication
Law & Politics in Africa, Asia & Latin America / Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ), 2018, Vol 51, Issue 2, p140
- ISSN
0506-7286
- Publication type
Article