Soumane Touré

Soumane Touré (14 March 1948 – 25 March 2021) was a Burkinabé politician and trade unionist. He was a prominent student activist during his youth and joined the communist African Independence Party (PAI). He served as the general secretary of the Burkinabé Trade Union Confederation (CSB) for many years and was a prominent leader of the Patriotic League for Development (LIPAD) mass movement. He was arrested on several occasions by different governments and even sentenced to death in 1987, only escaping execution through an intervention by then president Thomas Sankara. He was elected to the National Assembly in 2002 and ran for president in 2005.

Early life and education Touré was born on 14 March 1948 in Diébougou (Bougouriba Province, then in French Upper Volta). Touré recruited Valère Somé, who hailed from the same village, into PAI in Dakar. He took part in the organization of the (UGEV) congress in Ouagadougou in 1971, at which he served as a rapporteur.

PAI leader Amirou Thiombiano unexpectedly died in 1975.

Mass leader Touré emerged as a prominent mass movement leader, and was noted for being a powerful orator at rallies and meetings. Touré was a prominent figure in the Patriotic League for Development (LIPAD) protest movement during the 1978–1980 period. The trade union movement protested against his arrest. Touré was thus in jail during the 4 August 1983 revolution.

Touré was arrested again in January 1985. On 10 January 1985, a Popular Revolutionary Tribunal cleared him of charges of being involved in a 298 million-CFA franc national social security fraud scheme. The CNR released Touré from jail on 2 October 1986.

In May 1987, Touré was jailed once more. On 26 May 1987, Touré had made statements condemning repression of the trade union movement and rejected government interference in the unions. According to the contemporary Burkinabé politician Valère Somé, many UCB leaders and several captains, such as GCB leader , actively pushed for Touré's execution at the meeting.

Touré went into early retirement from his role at SONAR in 2000.

In 1999 PAI split in two, with Touré leading one of the two PAI parties and Philippe Ouédraogo leading the other PAI party. A lengthy dispute between Touré and Ouédraogo over the right to the party name "PAI" ensued. Touré's PAI won five seats in the 2002 National Assembly election. At this point PAI's alliance with the CDP was broken and the two PAI ministers had left the government. Touré, standing as the PAI candidate, obtained 23,266 votes (1.13%).

Touré's PAI lost its registration in June 2011, as a result of the protracted administrative-political dispute over the right to the PAI party name after the 1999 split. Touré founded the Party of Independence, Labour and Justice (PITJ) in July 2011, and served as general secretary of the party.

Death Touré died at a private clinic in central Ouagadougou on 25 March 2021. The Prime Minister Christophe Joseph Marie Dabiré stated that " library of our country's political history has been closed forever!... Mr. Soumane Touré was a great fighter who was fully involved in politics and trade unionism for several decades, thus contributing to the construction and building of Burkinabe democracy."