Ouagadougo, Burkina Faso---Burkina Faso's interim parliament voted Tuesday to bar figures linked to deposed president Blaise Compaore from running for office, hours after several of the toppled leader's allies were arrested.
Ahead of the vote seven of Compaore's political allies, including three former ministers, were arrested for "alleged embezzlement", authorities said in a statement.
An eighth person linked to former foreign minister Djibrill Bassole was also held for "illegal political activities," and for "incitement to public disorder," said the statement.
The new electoral bill makes ineligible for October 11's presidential and legislative polls those who had publicly backed the former leader's efforts to change the constitution to extend his 27-year rule.
Compaore's move to amend the constitution sparked violent mass protests that forced him to resign in October 2014, prompting the military and an interim government to take control of the landlocked west African nation of about 17 million people.
The former president's action constituted "a political crime", said Guy Herve Kam, spokesman for a collective that spearheaded the protests against Compaore. A political sanction had to be meted out, he added.
Cherif Sy, who chairs the interim parliament also welcomed the vote, saying "history is moving forward".
But Compaore's party Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) denounced the bill as illegal, and said it had to be validated by the Constitutional Council before it can become law.
The party had warned it would "vigorously" oppose the legislation, and civil society groups on both sides of the divide called for demonstrations over the law.
Analyst Siaka Coulibaly also called the legislation a "law of exclusion" which "would have trouble passing on an international level".
Brief clashes broke out in the capital Ouagadougou on Tuesday pitting protesters against police.
From its creation in 1996, the CDP was a pillar of Compaore's regime, winning every poll and after 2007 elections handing the strongman president an absolute parliamentary majority. It is now a minority party.
Neither interim president Michel Kafando nor military-ruler-turned-prime-minister Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida, who took power after the popular uprising, are eligible to run in the upcoming polls.
AFP
