| Doubts hang over Togo’s
election
By Sun's Foreign Desk
Monday, May 2, 2005
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• Emmanuel Bob-Akitani
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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Although Togo is one of the tiniest of countries, a sliver
of land squeezed between Ghana and Benin, the recent presidential
election there has generated enormous interest and has been
widely regarded as a test for modern African democracy.
Elizabeth Blunt - who was in Togo over the election period
- asks whether it passed the test.
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It all started in February, with the sudden death of the man
who had ruled Togo for 38 years, General Gnassingbe Eyadema.
In a late-night ceremony, his old military colleagues hastily
swore in one of his sons, Faure Gnassingbe, as his successor,
totally disregarding the provisions of Togo's own constitution.
This was met by such an outcry, both at home and abroad, that
they were eventually forced to back down, and play by the
constitutional rules.
In terms of the letter of the law, the pressure put on Togo
by its African neighbours did what it set out to do.
The constitution was followed, the National Assembly speaker
took over as interim president, Faure Gnassingbe retired to
private life to fight his campaign, elections were held within
60 days, and Mr Gnassingbe has now been declared the elected
President of Togo.
North-south divide
But despite all this, the election has hardly enhanced Africa's
reputation as a modern, politically mature continent. The
image presented to the outside world has been of dense black
smoke hanging over the capital, Lome, and wild young men waving
machetes in the streets.
One problem sprang from the demand that Togo should follow
its rules to the letter.
Holding a sudden election within 60 days meant accepting a
constitutional amendment which barred the best-known opposition
leader from standing, and using an old and unsatisfactory
electoral register. The distribution of voters' cards was
rushed and chaotic.
This would have mattered less if all parts of the country
had been affected equally, but they were not.
Turnout figures tell the story. Prefectures in the two generally
pro-government northern regions had turnout figures over 90%.
In Lome, where the opposition is strongest, only 44% of those
on the roll voted.
And this was not apathy; everyone I met was passionately interested
in the election, and a lot of voters queued for several hours
to cast their vote.
So however well-conducted the voting and however accurate
the results announced, opposition supporters were already
convinced before election day that they were about to be cheated.
Result 'faked'
But was it a clean election and was the official result the
correct one? The voting was mostly good, but then at the end
of polling day there were a series of quite extraordinary
incidents - mostly in Lome - when truckloads of soldiers and
other armed men raided polling stations and seized boxes full
of uncounted ballots.
One incident - captured on camera by a French television crew
- is now being broadcast round the world.
The verdict of the official observers from the West African
regional organisation Ecowas was that these incidents were
regrettable but would not have changed the overall result.
The result, as announced by the electoral commission, gave
over 60% of the vote to the old president's son, Faure Gnassingbe.
But the opposition say that even that result was faked, that
the figures announced in by electoral commission in Lome do
not tally with the results counted at the polling stations.
They are now collecting their own copies of all those local
results, and taking them to the Constitutional Court to prove
- they say - that they were robbed of victory.
And it is true that some of the Ecowas observers who had been
watching the voting and counting, in central region in particular,
said privately they were surprised when they heard the official
results. They had got the impression that the area had gone
in favour of the opposition.
But Mr Gnassingbe was declared the winner there by a substantial
margin. And while the voting and counting were closely watched,
Ecowas did not observe the whole of the collation process
at the election commission in Lome, where the final results
were prepared.
So the election has brought not harmony and resolution, but
conflict and acrimony to Togo.
A cloud of doubt hangs over the result, as thickly as the
smoke from burning barricades hung over the city of Lome.
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