Remarrying a 22-year old former beauty queen a few weeks after the October election, he received a cool welcome in Ouagadougou returning from their honeymoon on 6 November. In the presidential election the following year Yaméogo was re-elected, with a supposed 100% support and 98.4% turnout. In 1964, the government strongly restricted the right of workers to organize and outlawed labour strikes, making the strong trade unions its enemies. The President's harsh policies, and deeply corrupt state of his administration, made him hugely impopular. ![]() Additionally, Yaméogo closely supported Israel, becoming the first African leader to visit the country, strongly opposing the Arab Republic of Egypt and Gamal Abdel Nasser. He joined the Conseil de l'Entente together with some other pro-French leaders. Originally favouring a pan-Africanist policy, in favour of a West African federation, he eventually dropped these policies in favour of the anti-federalism of France and his friend Houphouët-Boigny. ![]() Yaméogo's government would come to face charges of neocolonialism, as it aligned closely with the French government. ![]() Opposition parties, like the African Regroupment Party, were either merged with it or dissolved. Maurice Yaméogo, a close ally of the Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, created a single-party dictatorship, making his own Voltaic Democratic Union the sole legal political party in the country. French Upper Volta, a small, landlocked and largely impoverished colony of France had been decolonized in 1960.
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