Ruling party boosts majority in Burkina Faso poll

OUAGADOUGOU, May 12 (Reuters) The ruling party of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore gained a sweeping majority in last Sunday's parliamentary polls, provisional results announced by the country's electoral commission showed today.

Compaore's Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) party won 73 of 111 parliamentary seats up for grabs in the West African country, up from the thin majority it won five years ago, according to the national electoral commission.

''We're satisfied with this result. We have a clear, unequivocal and decisive majority,'' said CDP campaign director Jean Leonard Compaore. The party previously held 57 seats.

Blaise Compaore has ruled the former French colony -- one of the poorest countries in the world -- since he seized power in a 1987 coup. Like other rulers across West Africa, he introduced multiparty politics under foreign pressure in the 1990s.

The opposition accused Compaore's camp of using state funds during campaigning to shower gifts of caps, T-shirts, bicycles, mopeds and even money on the country's 4.5 million voters.

''We are not satisfied with our score but we expected it because of the fraud ... but we confirm our position as the second political force in the country,'' said Sidiki Belem, a member of the main ADF/RDA opposition grouping.

The electoral commission said turnout in the polls was 56 percent, down from 64 percent in 2002. Thirteen of the 47 parties which put forward candidates will be represented in the new parliament.

Burkina Faso, formerly called Upper Volta after the river that flows from it through neighbouring Ghana, has an illiteracy rate of over 70 percent. Some 90 percent of the population live from subsistence farming, livestock herding or growing cotton.

The country is West Africa's top cotton grower but earnings have shrunk as world market prices dropped in recent years, which farmers and the government blame on U.S. subsidies.

Political parties have five days to contest the outcome at the constitutional court if they wish to do so.

Reuters PDS VP0315