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| - Roch Kabore, who embodied Burkina Faso's hopes for change when he became president five years ago, must overcome doubts he can defeat a sharpening jihadist insurgency to win re-election on Sunday. The affable and burly Kabore, 63, once governed under ousted strongman Blaise Compaore but turned his back on the old regime before it cracked under the pressure of a massive popular revolt. In 2015, a year after Compaore was ousted after 27 years in power, Roch Marc Christian Kabore won the presidency with 53.49 percent of the vote in the first round and raised hopes for development and change in Burkina Faso, which means "the country of honest men" in the local language. But those hopes have faded as the West African country has descended into chaos, with almost daily attacks from jihadist groups that have killed more than 1,200 people in five years. With whole swathes of the country falling outside the state's authority, the security forces have been unable to quell the spiral of violence. Despite criticism from the opposition over his failure to stem the violence, Kabore is still expected to win a second term in Sunday's presidential election. "He is the big favourite against an opposition which has not managed to unite behind a single candidate," political science academic Drissa Traore said. Fond of wearing traditional clothing, Kabore's speeches verge on the surreal. He announces victories when attacks come one after the other and resorts to lofty patriotic language that appears from another era. Kabore's People's Movement for Progress (MPP) likes to showcase achievements in building roads, improving health and providing access to clean water. But this strikes a discordant note in a nation where one million people have fled their homes because of the jihadist violence and thousands of schools have had to close. "This is someone who undoubtably arrived with another idea (for his presidency), more social, more based around the reconciliation of the final difficult years under the Compaore regime, who was suddenly hit by a problem far from what he knows," Rinaldo Depagne of the International Crisis Group said. Roch Kabore "is a kind of lazy king who holds plenty of meetings and listens from his arm chair without taking decisions," a diplomat said in Abidjan, the main city in the neighbouring Ivory Coast. Security sources said the Kabore government, fearing a military coup, "has not given the army the means to respond" to the jihadists. Kabore, an insider described as "intelligent and consistent," is praised by his supporters for his wealth of political experience and organisational abilities. The former banker was appointed minister several times and prime minister in 1994, making him one of the main figures in the Compaore regime, but ultimately he became one of his leading opponents and helped topple him. Kabore's win five years ago showed he could bring together supporters of the old leader as well as backers of the October 2014 uprising that ousted Campaore. But his detractors say he lacks a grip on the country and that events have outpaced him. A devout Roman Catholic in a Muslim-majority country, Kabore served as premier from 1994 to 1996, steering Burkina through hardship caused by the devaluation of the CFA franc currency. For more than a decade he led the ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) party and was seen as Compaore's likely heir, even counting himself among the group that in 2010 began amending the constitution to keep the strongman in power. But Kabore abruptly fell out of favour in 2012 and was thrown out of the leadership to become a mere "political adviser" -- a move that eventually proved to be a blessing in disguise. Early in 2014, Kabore broke with the CDP to form the MPP, catapulting him to power in the vote that was widely seen as sealing the transition to democracy. As a student in the French city of Dijon, Kabore was a committed leftist, and when Burkina's revered Marxist leader Thomas Sankara took power, he became the director of the International Bank of Burkina before he had even turned 30. When Sankara was gunned down in 1987, Compaore took the reins. For his part, Kabore has seemed confident of winning more than 50 percent of the vote again on Sunday, eliminating the need for a run-off vote. "When the MPP was a baby, only a year old, it knocked out all its adversaries. It will not be beaten now that it is a young person with strong teeth," he said during the campaign. de-ab/stb/dl/erc
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