Togo: A Big Message From A Small Country

TOGO

A Big Message from a Small Country

At least four people died as protesters clashed with police last week in Togo. Among them was a 12-year-old boy.

The violence continued regardless.

“Even after a child was killed, Togo’s authorities continue to fuel the violence by deploying military officers carrying firearms to protest sites, which risks exacerbating an already tense situation,” saidAmnesty International in a report on the tiny West African country.

As Bloomberg wrote, the protests stemmed from the government’s decision to proceed with parliamentary elections set for Thursday despite opposition parties’ call for a boycott.

Opposition leaders are angry over a dispute with President Faure Gnassingbé over term limits, the African Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon-funded think tank, explained.

Gnassingbé assumed office in 2005 after the death of his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who was president for 38 years. His critics want to retroactively limit the president’s tenure to two terms, barring Gnassingbé from running for re-election in 2020.

But Gnassingbé proposed election reforms that would allow him to run for two more terms in the future, and potentially hold office until 2030.

Most Togolese support the opposition’s retroactive term limits. The question was slated to be put to voters in a referendum for Sunday, but that vote apparently was not held as tensions rose in the country.

In the run-up to the referendum and local elections, Gnassingbé banned protests. As this France 24 broadcast showed, the president’s critics were far from cowed.

“We’re not going to give our blessing to this masquerade being prepared,” opposition leader Brigitte Adjamagbo-Johnson told local radio, according to Agence France-Presse. “We will do everything so that the elections don’t happen – we never want fraudulent elections in Togo.”

In response, the government claimed to be simply maintaining order. “A boycott is a democratic choice,” said Gen. Yark Damehame. “One should not seek to destroy the voting booth or the ballot box.”

It’s not clear who outside Gnassingbé’s regime is supporting the president.

A civil society advocacy group, Living Force for Hope in Togo, appears to represent the public’s mind on the boycott, according to La Croix International, a France-based, English-language Catholic news outlet.

“Has the Togolese government abandoned its mission to protect individuals and simply become a repressive apparatus for arbitrary arrests and killings?” the group said in a statement.

Gnassingbé might control the levers of power, but against the will of his people, he can’t hold all the cards in this conflict.