Togolese voted today after approval of controversial Constitution

OThe results must be announced within six days following the vote.

Togo, a small country of 8.8 million inhabitants located between Benin and Ghana, has been governed by the Gnassingbé family since the 1960s: the current President, Faure Gnassingbé, replaced his father, Eyadema Gnassingbé, in 2005, who governed the country with an iron fist for almost 38 years.

“I welcome the peaceful conduct of the vote across the country and I urge all our fellow citizens to carry out their civic duty with serenity, in order to consolidate our democratic achievements”, declared the head of state on social media, after having voted in Pya, in the north of the country, the region where his family is from.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International also condemned today, in a statement, the holding of the elections, which it claims were being held “in a context of silencing dissenting voices”.

On the 19th, Togo’s parliament definitively adopted a new Constitution that moves the country from a presidential system to a parliamentary system, after several weeks of great political tension.

Heavily criticized by the opposition, the new Constitution came into force exactly ten days before today’s legislative and regional elections.

From now on, deputies will elect the President of the Republic and the President of the Council of Ministers, a type of prime minister who will concentrate powers.

The new text stipulates that deputies will elect the head of state “without debate” and “for a period of four years, renewable once”.

The real exercise of power will be in the hands of a president of the Council of Ministers, a kind of super prime minister, who will necessarily be “the leader of the majority party” in the National Assembly, stipulates the new text.

Currently, the head of state, Faure Gnassingbé, is the president of the majority party in the Assembly, the Union for the Republic (UNIR, in its French acronym).

For the Togolese opposition, this is where the problem lies, as it interprets the approval of the new Constitution as a maneuver by Faure Gnassingbé to stay in power.

The head of state had already changed the Constitution in 2019, allowing him to reset the meters and run for two more terms, in 2020 and 2025, he would, with the previous fundamental text, be forced to abandon power in 2030.

Gnassingbé, 57, has already won four elections, all of them contested by the opposition.

Togolese deputies had already adopted the new Constitution on March 25, after a few hours of debate and without the text being made public, which immediately provoked the indignation of the opposition and civil society, who quickly described the vote as a ” institutional coup d’état”.

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