Maurice Yaméogo

Maurice Yaméogo ( born December 31, 1921 ( ) in Koudougou; ? † September 9, 1993 in Ouagadougou ) was from 1960 to 1966 the first President of Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso.

Early years

Yaméogo belonged to the ethnic group of the Mossi, the largest population group in the country. He studied after visiting mission schools in the seminar of Pabré to become a Catholic priest, but lost his vocation to the priesthood when he met Félicité Zagre who later became his wife. He then joined the public service.

Political career

Since 1946 he was a member of the Parliament of the French overseas territory and was elected to the Council of French West Africa in 1948. He also became involved in the trade union movement and in 1954 was deputy chairman of the Christian Trade Union Confederation Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens ( CFTC ) for Upper Volta. At first he was a member of the Parti Démocratique party unifié, who belonged to the movement Rassemblement Démocratique Africain collection ( RDA). In 1957 he founded the Mouvement Démocratique party Voltaïque. In the elections, his group reached 26 of the 70 seats, while the RDA put 37 deputies. He was Agriculture Minister in a coalition government. End of the year broke the coalition and he moved to the RDA. In 1958 he became Minister of the Interior and after the death of the previous Government, Ouezzin Coulibaly, whose successor. He supported his country's accession to the planned Mali Federation. Massive pressure from Félix Houphouët- Boigny of the Ivory Coast led him to renounce the membership of the Federation. A re- fracturing the coalition led on 30 March 1959 elections, which won Yaméogo with his new party Union Démocratique Voltaïque ( UDV ) with 64 of 75 seats. In January 1960, the main opposition party was banned and most of their leaders were imprisoned.

President

With independence, Upper Volta on August 5, 1960, he became president and took over temporarily in addition the Office of the Secretary of State. From 1961 to 1962 he was also Minister of Defence from 1963 to 1965 and Secretary of Homeland Security. The existing parties were fused with the UDV to a single party. Opposition parties were no longer permitted. In foreign policy he tried to close cooperation with neighboring countries, especially with the Ivory Coast and the Afro - Malagasy Union.

As the only candidate he was confirmed on 3 October 1965, 99.9 % of the vote in office. After violent protests against his authoritarian politics, he was forced by a general strike on January 3, 1966, to resign. His successor for the next fourteen years was the General Sangoulé Lamizana.

He stood up in 1968 under arrest and was taken back in 1983 after the coup which brought Thomas Sankara to the head of state in custody. After his release in 1985 he went into exile in the Ivory Coast and returned back in 1990.

This and That

In 1964 he separated from his wife and married a former Miss Upper Volta. His son from his first marriage, Hermann Yaméogo, stepped up to the presidential elections on 13 November 2005 against the incumbent since 1987, President Blaise Compaoré. Even before the election, he withdrew his candidacy, but his name remained on the ballot papers. He came eleventh with 15,685 votes (0.76 %).