Are the Togolese opposition accusations against the President real?

Tensions are rising in Togo over major constitutional reforms ahead of delayed parliamentary elections. The constitutional reboot was approved by lawmakers last month but resubmitted for “consultations” as public anger over its stealthy passage through parliament mounted with police breaking up an opposition news conference and cracking down on protests.

The facts

The reforms would see Togo move from a presidential to a parliamentary system, essentially ushering in the country’s fifth republic. But opposition activists believe it’s all a ruse designed to keep longstanding President Faure Gnassingbe in power, preserving a dynastic system stretching back nearly six decades.

Amid the turmoil, Gnassingbe postponed parliamentary elections last week, a move that only served to stir up the unrest. Then, on Tuesday, the government announced that it would go ahead with the elections after all, rescheduling them for April 29, just over a week later than the original date.

At the same time, the government warned opposition groups to scrap plans for three days of protests this week, declaring the rallies illegal. But protest leaders in the small West African nation have vowed to take to the streets anyway, despite the recent arrests of nine opposition figures.

The arguments

Togo, a nation of around eight million people, has been ruled by the Gnassingbe family for nearly six decades.

The current president was just six months old when his father, General Gnassingbe Eyadema, seized power in 1967, a few years after participating in the country’s first postcolonial coup in 1963. His rule was characterized by brutality, his forces accused by Amnesty International of massacring hundreds after a fraudulent election in 1998.

When Eyadema died in 2005, the military moved swiftly to install his 38-year-old son, Faure Gnassingbe, in the presidential palace, provoking widespread fury. Standing with his Union for the Republic party (UNIR), he won elections shortly afterwards. However, the United Nations reported that security forces killed up to 500 people in the ensuing unrest.

In 2017 and 2018, there were further bouts of deadly unrest. Thousands of protesters gathered in the streets of Lome, the Togolese capital, to demand that Gnassingbe step down in accordance with the two-term limit set in the original 1992 constitution, a provision scrapped when parliament approved amendments removing presidential term limits in 2002.

To appease the critics, the UNIR-run parliament passed amendments in 2019, allowing limits to be reimposed for presidential terms from that year onwards, thus paving the way for the president’s re-election in 2020 and 2025. Gnassingbe clinched a fourth term in the latest poll, with runner-up Agbeyome Kodjo, who once served as his father’s prime minister, crying foul. He and other opposition members accused the government of using fake polling stations and stuffing ballot boxes. Kodjo, a leader of the Dynamique Monseigneur Kpodzro movement (DMK), went into hiding, dying in exile early this year. Gnassingbe’s opponents now fear the president’s latest amendments to the constitution are designed to keep him in charge even when the presidential term limits end.

At first glance, the constitutional reforms appear to give critics what they want, restricting the power of the president, who would be directly appointed by parliament for a single six-year term. Under the new system, executive power would instead lie with a “president of the council of ministers”, while Togo’s existing presidency will be reduced to a ceremonial role.

The holder of the new prime ministerial position, which would run for a six-year term, would be “the leader of the party or the leader of the majority coalition of parties following the legislative elections”.

Should the reforms pass, Gnassingbe’s opponents fear he could not only be reappointed president until 2031 but could also then step down from the job and switch to the new role of “president of the council of ministers” in what they say would be a constitutional coup.

Last month, the reforms sailed through parliament, approved by 89 lawmakers, with only one against and one abstention. Weak and historically divided, the main opposition parties had no say, having boycotted the last legislative elections in 2018, claiming “irregularities” in the electoral census. Opposition groups, including Djossou’s DMP, the DMK and the Alliance Nationale pour le Changement (ANC), want Gnassingbe to ditch the reform. But, for now at least, they have little political leverage.