This is good news for Togo! Faure Gnassingbe finally relented and stepped down, yesterday. Now the speaker of the parliament, Abass Bonfoh, has replaced “Baby Eyadema.” This puts Togo back into compliance with the original, pre-coup constitution.

The good news is that now the sanctions against Togo have been lifted and there should be elections within 60 days. And, since Baby Eyadema is not formally in charge of the government, maybe there is a chance that the elections will be reasonably fair. However, on Saturday Togo’s opposition staged a huge rally in Lomé demanding that Fambare Natchaba be reinstated as interim head of state. Monsieur Natchaba was the Feb. 5 parliament speaker, and should have replaced Eyadema after his death.

In the meantime, Saturday night, there were big celebrations in the opposition strongholds in Togo, like the Bé neighborhood in Lomé.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2005 at 2:32 pm and is filed under General, Palmwine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.