Togo.- The provisional results of the Togo elections give victory to the ruling party of Gnassingbé

MADRID, 5 (EUROPA PRESS)

Togo’s ruling party, led by President Faure Gnassingbé, has won the majority of votes in the legislative elections held on April 29, according to the final provisional results announced this Saturday by the country’s Electoral Commission.

Gnassingbé’s formation, the Union for the Republic (Unir), has obtained 108 of the 113 seats at stake in parliament, as announced by the president of the Independent National Electoral Commission (Céni), Dago Yabré, and this has been reported the newspaper ‘Togo Times’.

These results, the result of elections in which participation was 61 percent according to Céni, must be confirmed by the Togolese Constitutional Court.

Gnassingbé has been president of Togo since 2005, when he was brought to power with the support of the Army after the death of his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had been at the head of the country since 1967, thus consolidating a family saga at the head of the African country that extends for nearly six decades.

The father of the current president participated in two military coups d’état in 1963 and 1967 and took power after the second coup, when he established an anti-communist single-party system within the framework of the Cold War that lasted until the years nineties, when other parties were allowed to register and won three elections marked by allegations of fraud and irregularities on the part of the opposition.

After his death, his son – until then Minister of Mines – was quickly installed in office, although he was forced to resign 20 days later due to pressure for succession and doubts about the constitutionality of the movement. However, Gnassingbé won the elections held a month later, achieving three other re-elections since then in 2010, 2015 and 2020.

The last elections were marked by great controversy, given that his main rival, former Prime Minister Agbéyomé Kodjo, rejected the president’s victory and claimed to be the “elected president”, after which he was detained by the security forces and, after Upon his release, he went into exile, where he died in March of this same year.