Presidential candidates say broadcasts censured

Several opposition parties in Togo have complained that party political broadcasts by their presidential candidates have been cut and censured by the government before going out on television and radio. Emmanuel Bob-Akitani, the presidential candidate of the Union of Forces for Change, whose leader Gilchrist Olympio has been barred from standing in the 1 June election, and two other candidates lodged formal complaints with the government's media watchdog, the High Council for Audiovisual Communications, earlier this week. However, the Commission threw out their complaints on Wednesday, ruling that the passages of their broadcasts which had been cut "violate the dispositions of the decree which establish the rules of production, programming and broadcast of election campaign broadcasts." Six opposition candidates have been cleared to stand against President Gnassingbe Eyadema, who has ruled this former French colony in West Africa for 36 years and is seeking another five-year term. But Olympio, who came second at the last presidential election in 1998, was banned on the grounds of administrative technicalities. Besides Bob-Akitani, two other presidential candidates, Leopold Gnininvi and Yawovi Agboyibo, also lodged formal complaints that their election broadcasts had been cut. Eyewitnesses meanwhile reported that several thousand supporters of another presidential hopeful, Maurice Dahuku Pere, were attacked by masked men, some of whom were known to have close connections with the government, after holding a rally at Lome university on Wednesday. Several people were injured, but police and paramilitary gendarmes who were called to the scene declined to intervene, they added. Serious misgivings about the credibility of the electoral process have persuaded the European Union and the Senegalese-based human rights organisation RADDHO not to send observers to the election. France, however, the former colonial ruler of Togo, has confirmed that it intends to send a group of parliamentary deputies to monitor the poll.