Burkina Faso President Elects Former Director of Nuclear Watch Zerbo as Prime Minister
Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore on Friday elected Lassina Zerbo, a former head of a major nuclear watchdog, as the new prime minister of the West African nation, according to a decree.
The 58-year-old geophysicist will take office amid growing popular discontent over deadly jihadist violence in the poverty-stricken country.
“The president … decrees: Lassina Zerbo is appointed prime minister,” said government spokesman Stephane Wenceslas Sanou, reading the decree on television.
A new cabinet lineup is expected in the coming days.
Zerbo was executive secretary of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) from 2013 until this summer.
He is relatively unknown to most Burkinabeans, but has gained some recognition abroad for his efforts to ban nuclear explosives testing.
In 2018, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Award for Scientific Diplomacy for “using his scientific expertise and leadership skills to … promote world peace.”
But Zerbo faces a Herculean task as the new head of government in his home country.
He will replace Joseph Dabire, whose resignation Kabore accepted on Wednesday as he sought to quell public anger over the perceived inability of the government to end deadly jihadist violence.
Jihadist attacks have become increasingly regular and deadly in Burkina Faso since 2015, killing 2,000 people and displacing 1.4 million from their homes, especially in the north and east.
‘Support the war effort’
The peak of deadly violence occurred on November 14 when 57 people, 53 of them gendarmes, were killed in the north of the country.
Two weeks before being attacked, the gendarmes had warned headquarters that they were running out of supplies and had to trap animals for food.
They had been waiting in vain for several days for a relief force when they were attacked by hundreds of fighters in vans and motorcycles, according to accounts of the battle.
But the country’s ill-equipped security forces have fought a ruthless and highly mobile enemy.
Before the new prime minister was appointed, on Friday night, Kabore had called all Burkina Faso to a demonstration to overcome “terrorism”.
“I call on all the daughters and sons of our nation to support the war effort, each according to their abilities,” he said, without providing further details.
In late November, 10 people were injured, including a child and two journalists, when police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters in the poverty-stricken nation’s capital, Ouagadougou.
On Thursday night, the armies of Burkina Faso and neighboring Niger said they had killed about 100 “terrorists” in a joint military operation against jihadists on the border between November 25 and December 9.
They had also dismantled two bases, one on each side of the border, they said in a joint statement.
Kabore was first elected in 2015, a year after his predecessor Blaise Compaore, who took power in 1987, was ousted in mass protests for seeking to change the constitution to stay in office.
(AFP)
