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Togolese parliamentary election
April 20
Parliamentary elections are due to be held in Togo on 20 April 2024 in order to elect the 113 members of the National Assembly, alongside the first regional elections in the country.
Togo’s political life is dominated by the ruling Union for the Republic (UNIR), whose leader Faure Gnassingbé has been in power since the death of his father Gnassingbé Eyadéma in 2005. Faure Gnassingbé was initially interim president before being elected to the presidency later the same year, then re-elected in 2010 and 2015. This ““dynastic democracy” is maintained from election to election through the repression of the opposition, election fraud and the modification of the constitution.
The previous parliamentary elections in 2018 were boycotted by the C14 Alliance, the main opposition group of fourteen parties, following irregularities in the preparation of the vote and the refusal of Gnassingbé to abandon his constitutional revision project. Gnassingbé had aimed to reinstate the limit on the number of presidential terms while “resetting it to zero”, allowing him to remain in power beyond his third term, which ended in 2020. The 2018 parliamentary election campaign was marked by repression against demonstrators, and several deaths, including at least three by gunfire, were reported, leading the government to ban all marches or public gatherings in mid-December. In the absence of any real opponents, UNIR retained its absolute majority, winning 59 of the 91 seats. The parliament also saw a sharp increase in the number of independent deputies, with 18 winning seats. The Union of Forces for Change (UFC) and four other groups shared the remaining seats.
Despite the absolute majority obtained, the election result was initially considered a failure for UNIR as it failed to win the four-fifths majority of seats necessary for a constitutional amendment to be passed by parliamentary means alone. However, on 8 May 2019 the government passed a constitutional amendment almost unanimously, which allowed Gnassingbé to remain in office until 2030. Gnassingbé was unsurprisingly re-elected in the first round of the 2020 presidential elections with more than 70% of the vote, a result contested by the opposition which accused the government of electoral fraud.
Sources and further reading:
Togo announces legislative and regional elections will be held in early 2024
