Togo votes, hopes and gets teargassed
Surprise! The Gnassingbes did it again! 40 years in power and counting!
The CENI published the “election” results and Faure Gnassingbe, son of Togos late dictator apparently won by a landslide. To celebrate this victory he had a couple hundred protesters in Lomé teargassed. The military is in the streets of Lomé, making sure no sore “losers” try to spoil the RPT’s victory celebration. Some say that opposition leaders were arrested. The AP says that there was a serious disagreement at the CENI about the way the results were reported to the comission:
From morning until late at night on Saturday, the commissioners sat around a large table in a conference room as the representatives of each district presented their results. In the early afternoon, two opposition-allied commissioners stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind them.
“I would have like to be able to say that, I, Jean-Claude Codjo, election commissioner, agree that this election is free and fair,” he said. “But we are only being allowed to see a synthesis. I have no way of knowing if these numbers that are being read out are real. I say ‘no.’ I cannot accept this,” said Codjo as he left the parking lot.
The satellite-system would have allowed the results from each of roughly 5,900 polling stations to be sent directly to the election commission’s headquarters in Lome. By contrast each of the 35 districts whose results were being read out were an aggregate of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individual polling stations.
Well, it looks like the RPT did it again, and they had their way with Togo electorate. But it also looks like turnout was really low in the opposition strongholds. And who can blame them. Why bother to vote when you just get cheated every time. I just hope the frustration over being cheated like this does not boil over in violent form. That would just give the RPT thugs a cause for more repression. I guess the only thing the opposition can do is patiently chip away at the support for the RPT among the Kabyie people and among the military. Once that support crumbles, it’ll be time for change in Togo.
March 7th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
I love your web page and your consideration about Togo. Can you inform the president Barack Obama and the American people about the suffering of the Togolese people?
You said that:”it also looks like turnout was really low in the opposition strongholds.” It looks like it but this is not true. If this was true, why the regime did not use the VSAT machine gave by Europens Union? why? why? why?
All the 35 voting districts director are part of the RPT thugs and the regime.
Don’t buy the regime lies. You are too smart to fall into this low turnout claimed by RPT and the actual regime. I lived in Togo before. I study there. I know who they are and how they operate. Those thugs are affraid of being judged and sentenced for human right vilations in case they lost any election. The will stick to the power and nothing in this world will lead to reason. They lost the sense of reality.
Before the beginning of the election, the Togolese totalitarian and despotic regime and RPT were advertising for non-violent elections instead of advertising for fair and transparent elections. Togolese are denied their own nationality rights, roads, schools, hospitals and standard of living have gone from bad to worst.Therefore it is not going to be possible for him to win a re-election, unless the election is rigged like they use to do. This was an indication that the election will be rigged. The Togolese knew that the elections will be rigged but they decided to still go and vote because they wanted to show to the whole world that they want a change. Faure Gnassingbe and all his thugs of RPT are modern dictators. They want to turn Togo into North Korea or into Burma where people are denied their rights of life. Did the European Union give the Gnassingbe regime a lot of money to organize rigged elections?
Did all those international observers were silent about all those egregious fraud?
When the indifference of the international community to suffering of the Togolese will be condemned publicly?
March 7th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
You can go online and read the incomplet Europeans Union and and MOE rapport about the Togolese election. it is in french just translate it into english.
It is on this web site: http://www.mo5-togo.com or http://www.mo5-togo.com/actualites/585-ue-togo-rapport-complet-de-la-mission-dobservation-avant-la-proclamation-des-resultats-.html