EU funds to help poor within grasp if new elections set

European Union officials on Thursday urged Togo’s feuding politicians to speed up a year-long national dialogue and settle on an agreement for organising new elections, to enable the EU to hand over millions of dollars of badly-needed assistance. “The election date, for us, is not fundamental. An agreement on the electoral framework to kick-start cooperation, finally and completely is,” said Filiberto Sebregondi head of the EU team which flew into Lome last week to assess progress in dialogue between the government, opposition parties and civil society representatives. The EU, a major donor in West Africa, the world’s poorest region, cut off assistance to Togo in 1993 amid deep concerns over human rights and democracy. But in 2004, in the last months of the late Gnassingbe Eyadema’s 38-year presidency, the authorities and the EU agreed on a 22-point roadmap to switch the aid back on. Progress on implementing the roadmap - which includes electoral reform, liberalisation of the media and a new date for free and fair parliamentary elections - broke down last year in waves of violence that erupted after Eyadema’s death and the disputed election of his son to the presidency. A year on from the controversial April 2005 presidential poll, described by the opposition as being rigged, the EU is dangling a 55 million euro, or US $70 million, carrot before the Togolese government if ongoing talks with opposition parties will produce results and an election date. “I hope that my visit to Lome reassures all the parties and above all raises their awareness that the party that ruins the dialogue will bear a crushing responsibility towards the Togolese people,” said EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel as talks started lasted week. “The door is open to enormous financial stakes for the Togolese people,” Michel said. “[But] an agreement on a date for the elections will be necessary as well as on how to organise them democratically.” Opposition politicians complain that the country has been dominated by the Eyadema clan for too long and that Togo has never had a free and fair poll in its 46 years since independence from France. More than 40,000 people fled the country into neighbouring Benin and Ghana last year amid the violence, claiming of brutal harassment by security forces against opposition bastions. Most have still not returned home. But opposition leader and head of the national dialogue, Yawovi Agboyibo, last weekend reported progress in reaching agreement between Togo’s rival political camps. “A consensus has been reached on the drawing up of ballot papers, a voter identification cards and unfalsifiable photographs.” And one matter on which opposition, government and civil society representatives agree, is that Togo is in desperate need of financial help. At first glance, its capital city Lome is little different to any other in West Africa - streets are busy with mango-sellers and newspaper vendors and roads clogged by battered taxis and blue exhaust haze from mopeds. But behind the bustle lies a deep economic malaise. Crumbling schools are short of teachers and the government cannot even pay the overburdened few there are. In many villages, impoverished farmers have to scrimp together what money they can to pay teachers themselves. The few hospitals and clinics that exist in rural areas are hopelessly under-resourced and their frequently unpaid staff lack motivation. Cooperation Minister Gilbert Bawara told IRIN that there were two EU funds within Togo’s reach. One is a 15 million euro stabilisation of export earnings, or STABEX, fund, the second a bigger European Development Fund, or EDF, worth between 20 and 40 million euros, explained Bawara. “The releasing of the STABEX is faster,” said Bawara, “whereas the EDF requires a period of notification and then another for the releasing of the funds.” Both sums constitute the remainder of cash-lines suspended by the EU over a decade ago. Much of the cash would go on water provision and road building in rural areas, and agricultural development focusing on the cotton sector, said Bawara. The largest EDF will be directed into good political and economic governance programmes, road works and the education and health sectors, he added. EU Commissioner Michel appeared optimistic that a political deal was imminent to pave the way to the arrival of the EU funds, saying the poisonous political climate in Togo has improved in recent months, “I have a feeling that Togo is on the right path,” he told reporters in Lome.