Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore will stand for re-election in polls due in November, his party said on Saturday, a move which the West African country's opposition says violates the constitution. Compaore seized power in a 1987 coup and went on to win two landslide elections in 1991 and 1998, both of which were boycotted by the main opposition parties, who deemed the electoral system neither fair nor transparent. An umbrella group of 15 opposition parties, Alternance 2005 (Change 2005), said in an open letter published on Friday that Compaore's candidacy in the November 13 polls would be in "flagrant violation of the constitution". The constitution was changed in 2000 to reduce the presidential term to five years from seven and to allow a leader to be re-elected only once. But the ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress Party says the amendment cannot be applied retroactively and so does not apply to Compaore, because he had already started his second term when the change was made. Burkina Faso was ranked 175th in the United Nations 2004 Human Development Index of 177 countries. Over 80 percent of its 13 million people live on less than $2 a day.
