Opposition calls for postponement of presidential election

An alliance of six opposition parties in Togo has urged the government to postpone presidential elections due on 24 April, saying free and fair polls cannot be organised in such a short space of time. The opposition parties, who support the candidature of Emmanuel Bob Akitani, called for the postponement and stronger international involvement in the electoral process at a rally of several thousand people in the capital Lome on Saturday "The Collective demands that the government and the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) revise the electoral calendar in order to assure its representation in all the local electoral bodies and to allow the international community to become more closely involved in the electoral process," they said in a joint statement. However, the six opposition parties did not suggest a new date for the presidential election, which was triggered by the death in office of president Gnassingbe Eyadema on 5 February. Eyadema, who ruled this small West African country of five million people with an iron hand for 38 years, was Africa's longest serving head of state. The army initially installed his 39-year-old son, Faure Gnassingbe, to replace him. But following howls of international protest, Gnassingbe stood down three weeks later, leaving a close ally of his late father to take over as interim head of state and organise fresh elections. Before handing over the reins of power, Gnassingbe was acclaimed as the presidential candidate of his father's ruling party, the Rally of the Togolese People (RPT). This controls nearly all the seats in parliament and all the levers of government. Bob Akitani, 74, is standing for the second time in a row as a surrogate candidate for veteran opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio who has lived in exile in Paris for several years. He was officially declared runner-up with nearly 34 percent of the vote when he stood against Eyadema in June 2003.

Gilchrist Olympio, left, in Lome

Olympio, the son of Togo's assassinated first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was banned from standing personally in the 2003 election under an article of the constitution which stipulates that all presidential candidates must be resident in Togo for at least 12 months prior to the election. The same article has kept him on the sidelines this time too. Diplomats say the this year's presidential election is likely to be a straight fight between Gnassingbe, the heir apparent of Eyadema, and Bob Akitani, the number two figure in Olympio's Union of Forces for Change (UFC) party. Two other minor candidates had submitted their papers before nominations closed on Saturday; Harry Olympio, a distant relative of Gilchrist Olympio who was a close collaborator with Eyadema's regime, and Nicolas Lawson, a minor opposition leader who only won less than 5,000 votes when he stood as a presidential candidate in 2003. Eyewitnesses estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 opposition supporters took to the streets of Lome on Saturday to demand a postponement of next month's poll. However, the 24 April election date has already been endorsed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which was influential in getting Faure Gnassingbe to stand down as interim head of state and is helping to organise the poll, so the chances of the government agreeing to any postponement look slim. While Saturday's opposition rally took place in the suburb of Be, the scene of frequent anti-government protests in recent weeks, the RPT filled a small football stadium with several thousand of its own supporters for a counter-rally in support of Gnassingbe. Government supporters there carried banners reading "No to any postponement of the elections." Robert Assedi, the official spokesman of the ruling party, said the opposition only wanted the polls delayed because it wasn't ready to face the electorate. Both the RPT and the opposition alliance urged Togolese citizens to ensure their names were included on the electoral roll. This is being hurriedly updated in a 10-day operation which is due to end on 5 April. The opposition alleged that nearly a quarter of the names included on the lists used in the 2003 presidential election were false. The operation to update the electoral lists began on Monday, but many citizens complained that officials were only agreeing to register young people aged under 20 who had been too young to vote in the previous election. At one voter registration bureau set up in a Lome school, a correspondent for IRIN encountered dozens of older people who had not been allowed to register. These included a 65-year-old lady who had voted in the past but was told that her national identity card was out of date and a 29-year-old man who protested that he had never been able to vote because his name had always been excluded from the electoral roll. "We have received orders to only include the names of people aged between 18 and 20 because this group was not old enough to vote at the time of the last presidential election," one official at the bureau told IRIN.