Yearbook 2013
Togo. According to Countryaah, Parliamentary elections could be held in July, greatly delayed. This after the opposition protested against changes in the electoral law which were considered to favor the ruling party. Controversial issues were about the composition of the electoral commission, the number of votes to win seats in various constituencies, and the opposition and civil society being given space in state-controlled media. There was also disagreement over whether President Faure Gnassingbé would be allowed to stand in the 2015 presidential election.
In the election, Gnassingbe’s Party Collection for the Republic (UNIR) won a grand victory. The party got 62 out of 91 seats in parliament. In 2012, the President dissolved the Government Party Collection for the People of Togo (RPT), which his father – the country’s late president – had founded in 1969. UNIR went to election on what the government did.
Four opposition parties received 29 seats, of which the Rescue Togo collective received 19 seats. The opposition claimed that electoral fraud had occurred, but election observers from the regional cooperative organization ECOWAS had no major objections. The election was preceded by protests.
One month after the election, the government resigned. In September, the president again appointed Kwesi Ahoomey-Zunu as prime minister. The new government had 26 members, six fewer than the previous one. a new foreign minister. The government also included the opposition party Union of Changing Forces (UFC), which has declined sharply. It received three seats compared to 27 in the 2007 elections.
- According to AbbreviationFinder.org, Lome is the capital city of Togo. See acronyms and abbreviations related to this capital and other major cities within this country.
History
To mark the path of the Togo in the nineties was the tiring management of the new pluralist political scenario: after a period of violent clashes and protests, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) by EG Eyadéma (president of the Republic since the 1967 coup) had in fact found himself forced to introduce multi-partyism (September 1992). The elections of February 1994 saw the close success of the progressive Comité d’Action pour le Renouveau (CAR), which, however, did not take part in the new government, formed by the RPT and the centrist Union Togolaise pour la Démocratie (UTD) and led by the leader of the UTD, E. Kodjo.
The by-elections for three seats, scheduled for November 1994, were a new cause of clashes between the majority and the opposition, led by the CAR, which boycotted the National Assembly by requesting the establishment of independent structures to guarantee the regularity of the vote. The clash forced the postponement of the consultations to a later date.
Despite the attempt to allay internal tensions – as demonstrated by the amnesty granted to all prisoners for political crimes (December 1994) and the payment to state employees of the arrears wages accumulated during the general strike of 1992-93 (June 1995) – the party relations remained difficult. The conflict erupted on the occasion of the rescheduling of the supplementary elections, scheduled for August 1996. To the refusal by the government to submit the ballot to an international observation committee, the CAR responded by withdrawing from the consultations: without its strongest opponent, the RPT won a clear victory. On the strength of this result, Eyadéma, having obtained the resignation of Kodjo, entrusted the presidency of the Council to the former Minister for Planning, K. Klutse: both the CAR and the UTD, effectively ousted, refused to take part in the new government.
In the following October, the decision of a minor party, the Union pour la Justice et la Démocratie (UJD, 2 seats), to join the RPT, combined with the change of front of an UTD deputy, guaranteed the ruling party an absolute majority in the National Assembly (41 seats out of 81). The opposition, lacking effective tools to carry out its demands, increasingly resorted to forms of protest such as the boycott of parliamentary sessions and the organization of popular demonstrations. At the heart of the claims remained the protection of the authority and independence of the bodies appointed to supervise the regularity of the voting operations: the refusal of the TOR to grant the Constitutional Court the power to judge on electoral issues led CAR and UTD to desert the proceedings parliamentarians for the renewal of the Court itself (established in any case in February 1997); in September 1997 the establishment of a new electoral commission of 9 members (of which 4of the opposition) under the direction of the President of the Court of Appeal. The CAR boycotted the session, in response to the government’s refusal to publish the results of a European Union inquiry into the elections in the country: in the same month, with other formations including the Union des Forces de Changement (UFC), it organized a demonstration against the government, accused of illegality in the conduct of the presidential elections.