Opposition says elections marred by irregularities

Hours after polling closed in Togo's presidential elections on Sunday, all the four opposition parties and one independent candidate, said the polls were marred by widespread fraud and irregularities in favour of Africa's longest serving incumbent, Gnassingbe Eyadema. The parties, namely the Union of Forces for Change, Action Committee for Renewal Party, Pan-African patriotic Convergence [a merger of four opposition parties], Socialist Pact for Renewal and independent candidate, Nicholas Lawson, called for a rerun of the elections. In separate press conferences, they said ballot boxes were stuffed by officials while opposition supporters were intimidated or barred from polling stations. Fictitious polling centers, they added, were created while some existing centers did not receive ballots. Officials sympathetic to Eyadema, they added, closed polling centers before the official time of 17:00 GMT, denying many of Togo's 3.2 million voters a chance to decide who would run the country for the next five years. Ballots were being counted and results are expected to be announced by Tuesday. Election observers from the African Union (AU) and the government denied the opposition claims. Ewangi Cephace Germain, head of the AU observer team said in his first assessment that the polls went on smoothly despite a few minor incidents which do not discredit the entire process. Some 187 international observers monitored the elections, Togo's third multi-party polls in 43 years of independence. Eyadema, an army general who seized power in 1967 in a bloody coup, won the first multi-party elections in 1993 and the second in 1998 amidst widespread allegations of vote rigging. The European Union cut aid in 1993 citing a poor human rights record. Zeus Ajavon, opposition member of the independent electoral mission told IRIN that in Tsevie, an electoral ward 30 km north of the capital Lome, disgruntled voters burned tires and attacked the townhall. Tear gas was used to used to disperse them, other sources said on Monday. "I arrived at the polling station before 6:30 GMT and noticed the transparent side of the ballot box facing the wall. I ordered them to turn the box so that the transparent side could be visible, then I noticed that there were already ballots cast in the box," Ajavon told IRIN. "I toured other polling offices and it was the same thing." Maurice Dahuku Pere, candidate for the opposition Socialist Pact for Renewal, told IRIN on Sunday that in Eyadema's hometown northern region "the prefect of Kozah ordered the verification of ballots, noticed that the election was not in favour of Eyadema and ordered a recount of the votes." A former politburo member of Eyadema's Rally of the Togolese People party, Pere said Thursday's early voting for security personnel was also rigged. Some security personnel, he added, cast their votes under the watchful eye of a "brother-in-arms" who was posted in the voting booth. The Union of Forces for Change, Togo's most prominent opposition party and the African People's Democratic Convergence party, ruled out any participation in a governmnet of national unity under Eyadema. The incumbent had, at a campaign rally on Friday pledged to form a government of national unity if he was declared winner. President Gnassingbe Eyadema has ruled Togo's five million people with an iron grip since coming to power. A reluctant convert to multiparty politics in the 1990's, Eyadema, 67, is the continent's longest serving President, beating Gabon's Omar Bongo by 10 months. He changed the constitution in 2002 to allow him seek another term.