Togo’s election commission declared the son of the country’s late dictator winner of the presidential race, extending the family’s rule into a fifth decade in a blow to Togo’s opposition, which vowed to take to the streets.
Provisional results on Saturday showed that Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe won 1.2 million votes, representing 60.9 percent of the roughly 2 million votes cast in the country, said Issifou Tabiou, the head of the election body.
Opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, who had earlier accused the ruling party of rigging the election, received 692,584 votes, or 33.9 percent.
As it became clear that the opposition had lost and Gnassingbe would get a second term, Fabre led a group of about 200 protesters to a downtown square where they were pushed back by anti-riot police who fired tear gas, witnesses and a police spokesman said.
The election was only the second since the death of Eyadema Gnassingbe, who grabbed power in a 1967 coup, only for his son to seize power upon the dictator’s death in 2005. The younger Gnassinge went on to win elections that same year that were widely viewed as rigged.
Pro-Gnassingbe soldiers openly intimidated voters at polling stations and in several instances opened fire with live ammunition before stealing the ballot box, Amnesty International said.
Although the opposition has claimed that this election was rigged, international observers said earlier they have not seen overt evidence of fraud. But they say there is evidence that the ruling party tried to buy off voters.
During campaign rallies, opposition supporters chanted “We were not paid to be here” — a jab at Gnassingbe who they accuse of handing out cash and bags of rice to supporters.
Election monitors from the EU’s observation mission were present in at least four regions of the country when members of the ruling party handed out rice at a cost three to four times less than at the market, the mission’s preliminary report said on Saturday.
The district by district results indicated that turnout was between 70 percent and 80 percent in the north of the country, where Eyadema Gnassingbe was born and which has traditionally voted for the ruling party. By contrast, voter turnout was woefully low in the south and in the capital, the opposition’s stronghold.
Jean-Claude Homawoo, the vice president of the election commission, said voters were so used to elections being rigged that they gave up hope just when their vote may have counted.
“It’s the effect of successive failure. So many times we went and voted in elections we knew we had won, only for the opposite result to be declared. So people have become tired. They don’t believe their vote counts anymore,” he said.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
RSS