Following in the footsteps of his father, who ruled Togo with an iron fist for almost 40 years, President Faure Gnassingbe, who has been in power since 2005, has been accused by the opposition of trying to maintain his grip on power by revising the Constitution.
Why are these elections so eagerly awaited?
In Togo, members of parliament are elected for a five-year term. The last legislative elections were held in 2018, and the Togolese president gave assurances at the end of 2022 that they would be held during 2023, before shifting the electoral timetable several times.
The Togolese will vote on Monday to elect 113 deputies, compared with 91 in 2018. The regional elections will be the first to be held in a country divided into five regions. According to the electoral code, the provisional results at national level will be announced by the Electoral Commission ‘no later than six days after the poll’.
The regional elections will see the election of 179 regional councillors who, along with the municipal councillors, will elect the senators.
The Senate was established by the 2002 constitutional amendment but
has never been set up, so the regional elections will provide an
opportunity to install it.
“From now on, bills and proposed legislation will first go before the senators, who will have to give their opinion, before being adopted by the deputies’, Pascal Agbove, an expert in decentralisation, told AFP.
What is the current political climate?
It has been very tense since the first reading of a new Constitution was adopted by the MPs on 25 March, changing the country from a presidential to a parliamentary system. This lightning adoption provoked an outcry in the ranks of the opposition and civil society, following which President Gnassingbé called for a re-examination of the text, which was definitively adopted by the MPs on 19 April.
But the opposition is still up in arms about the reform, denouncing it as an ‘institutional coup d’état’ designed to enable Faure Gnassingbe to stay in power.
Where does the opposition stand?
The opposition is preparing to challenge the ruling Union pour la République (UNIR) party in the forthcoming elections, having boycotted the 2018 legislative elections on the grounds of ‘irregularities’ in the electoral census.
It mobilised a large number of supporters for the census. 4.2 million voters are registered on the electoral roll, i.e. almost half of the country’s 8.8 million inhabitants, compared with 3.1 million registered in 2018.
In November, the opposition also contested the electoral roll validated by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), and fears ‘electoral fraud’ during these legislative elections.
Is a changeover possible?
President Faure Gnassingbé has been in power since 2005, following in the footsteps of his father who held the reins of the country for almost 38 years.
“We shouldn’t expect much from the legislative elections,” Jean Yaovi Degli, a lawyer and former minister responsible for relations with parliament (1991-1992), told AFP.
“The opposition does not have enough grassroots support to translate any discontent into the ballot box,” he believes, without ruling out a “surprise,” but “the elections would still have to be transparent and democratic.”
Under the terms of the new Constitution, it is the deputies and senators, meeting in Congress and no longer the people, who will elect the President of the Republic.
Power will reside in the hands of a President of the Council of Ministers. The leader of the majority party in the National Assembly will automatically hold this position. At present, Faure Gnassingbé is the leader of the majority party, UNIR.
“In a parliamentary system, there are no term limits; the person who governs is the representative of the majority party in the Assembly. If the governing party no longer has a majority, then there will be an alternation,” explains Jean Yaovi Degli.
“These elections are not fair because the party in power is usingstate resources, and you need money to campaign,” Michel Goeh-Akue, a historian close to the opposition, told AFP, adding that it would be
difficult to see the country moving towards a changeover “unless there is a revolution.”
AFP/fss/abj/APA