A popular reggae tune, “Quitte le Pouvoir!” or “Give Up Power,” the jaunty anthem of African protesters, alternated with a variation of the slogan used in Tunisia four months before: “Blaise, give it up!” Some protesters held up signs comparing Mr. Compaoré, a former army captain who has been regularly re-elected with 80 percent of the vote, to the ousted Tunisian ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Politicians from many of the country’s 34 opposition parties joined local pop music stars in a demonstration that lasted for hours under a blazing sun. They condemned Mr. Compaoré’s lengthy rule and accused him of corruption and patronage politics. Trucks of friendly soldiers waved to the protesters, many of them young people.
The demonstration came on the heels of two months of ferment among the usually quiet population, as students, soldiers, merchants and most recently the police have all taken to the streets to protest high prices, low wages and Mr. Compaoré’s undivided rule in a country that is ninth from the bottom on the United Nations’ Human Development Index.
A political crisis in neighboring Ivory Coast — which landlocked Burkina Faso depends on for food shipments — has forced up living costs, adding to the unrest.
The previous protests have been violent, with soldiers rampaging through the capital and provincial cities earlier in April, looting and burning offices of Mr. Compaoré’s ruling party, and even co-opting his elite presidential guard. The ruler, who seized power in a 1987 coup, has been shaken: he has dismissed his government, named a former journalist as his new prime minister and met with army officers — he did so on Friday — to promise better pay.
Those measures did not impress Saturday’s fist-waving crowd, assembled in a giant asphalt plaza. “Since Blaise Compaoré took power, by the method that you know” — and the crowd shouted “murder, murder!” — “there’s a tiny minority that has robbed and pillaged, while the majority has stagnated in misery,” said Tahirou Barry of the National Renaissance Party.
“The people are fed up! The soldiers are fed up! The students are fed up! The shopkeepers are fed up!” yelled Norbert Tiendrebeogo of the Social Forces Front. The crowd cheered a local rap star, S’Mockey, when he yelled: “The problem is, it’s not a democracy. It’s been tropicalized.”
Still, the heterogeneous nature of the protest’s organizers, including politicians from several dozen different parties, points to the central problem of the opposition, in the view of analysts: it is deeply divided after years of Mr. Compaoré’s rule.
“I’d be very surprised if the Compaoré regime collapses,” said Pierre Englebert, a political scientist at Pomona College and a Burkina Faso expert. “At the core of his regime, he’s repressive. But he handles things with a certain distance. You can be corrupted. He’ll let steam off.”
Among the opposition’s strongest cards are the unsolved killings of two popular men: Thomas Sankara, Mr. Compaoré’s predecessor and army comrade, who was killed during the 1987 coup that he helped lead; and Norbert Zongo, a crusading journalist who was killed in 1998 while he was looking into the Compaoré family’s finances. There were frequent references to the two men on Saturday.
The high price of rice was also a focus of complaints. “Life has just become too hard,” said Moussa Lingani, a printer. Rice, he said, was now over $40 a bag.
“I haven’t eaten in two days,” said Remy Kafando, a farmer. “To eat, it’s just hard. We want a complete change. We don’t want anymore of this. We’re ready for civil war.”
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