Togo’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday declared Faure Gnassingbe as the winner of February’s presidential election, reported The New York Times.
“Having obtained the absolute majority of votes in the first round of the ballot, Mr. Faure Gnassingbe has to be declared elected president of the Republic,” announced Aboudou Assouma, president of the court.
In the final tally, Gnassingbe garnered 70.78 percent of the ballots while opposition leader and former Prime Minister Agbeyome Kodjodes got 19.46 percent of the votes and Jean-Pierre Fabre got 4 percent of the votes.
The voting turnout was over 76 percent. The incumbent president’s vote tally was by far the biggest of all the successive elections he has won.
The Togo court rejected the petition filed by Kodjo, who heads the Movement of Patriots for Democracy and Development. Kodjo had rejected the voting results, describing them as concocted in the ruling party’s laboratory. He alleged serious irregularities in voting, including ballot stuffing and the use of fake polling stations.
Kodjo had declared his own victory as democratically elected president with between 57 and 61 percent of the vote.
He added that “these fabricated numbers give the sense that we are in a real dictatorship, a dictatorship which wants nothing to do with democracy and doesn’t respect civil or political laws.”
The win extends Gnassingbe’s presidential term who took office in 2005 following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who seized power in 1967. As per the new law, Gnassingbe can remain in office until 2030.
In 2017 and 2018, the people of Togo launched mass anti-government protests demanding an end to the family’s five-decade rule. But despite the protests, Gnassingbe led an overhaul of the constitution of Togo in May last year that allowed him to run this year and potentially remain in office until 2030.
