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General News of Saturday, 19 February 2005

Gnassingbe bows to pressure for elections

LOME, 19 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Faure Gnassingbe, who
seized power in Togo following the death of his
father, has caved in to international demands for
quick presidential elections but has said he will not
quit until they are held.

“I have decided in the superior interest of the
nation, to follow the transition process in accordance
with the constitution... and to organise a
presidential election within the constitutional
timeframe of 60 days,” Gnassingbe said late Friday in
a long-awaited television broadcast to the nation.

“I will assure the continuity of the country while we
wait for a new president to be elected,” said
Gnassingbe, dressed in a dark suit, his eyes flitting
off-camera.

Riots have erupted on the streets of the capital,
Lome, since the army installed the burly 39-year-old
as successor to his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who
ruled this small West African country with a rod of
iron for 38 years until his death on 5 February.

The government has admitted that at least four
protesters were shot dead by security forces during
clashes over the last week.

Another opposition rally to protest at the
father-to-son-transmission of power took place in Lome
on Saturday, but passed off without any trouble.

Thousands of young people marched through the streets
of the suburb of Be, an opposition stronghold, blowing
whistles, banging plastic drums and waving red, yellow
and green Togolese flags above their heads. Many of
them carried crudely written placards saying “Togo is
not a monarchy.”

With the government having lifted its ban on public
demonstrations on Friday, the security forces
maintained a low-key presence and did not intervene.

Meanwhile, thousands of Gnassingbe supporters gathered
peacefully across town outside Lome 2, the
presidential residence, for a counter rally.

Following Eyadema’s death, the army suspended the
constitution before installing his son in power. It
then recalled parliament to tweak the constitution and
the electoral code to legitimise Gnassingbe’s
accession and postpone presidential elections until
2008.

However, the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), the African Union, former colonial ruler
France and the United Nations all demanded a return to
the old constitution, which foresaw power passing to
the head of the national assembly, Fambare Ouattara
Natchaba, and elections in early April.

Togo’s alliance of six opposition parties immediately
slammed Gnassingbe’s decision to remain in power and
forged ahead with a fresh protest demonstration.

Opposition angry

“With this declaration, he is continuing the coup
d’etat. He will bear the responsibility for the
destruction of Togo,” Leopold Gnininvi, head of the
Democratic Convention of the African People (CDPA)
opposition party, told IRIN on Friday night, minutes
after Gnassingbe had stated his intention to remain in
power.

“I beg the international community to come to our aid
quickly to stop the danger while there’s still time,”
the one-time professor added. “We risk having the same
situation here as in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote
d’Ivoire.”

The government shrugged off accusations that
Gnassingbe’s decision to cling to power meant there
had not been a complete return to the constitutional
order.

It pointed out that parliament had hastily sacked
Natchaba as head of the National Assembly and had
appointed Gnassingbe to replace him, giving the
president’s son the legal obligation to take over from
his father.

“The revision of the constitution is completely
independent from the procedure which made Faure
Gnassingbe the head of the national assembly,”
Communications Minister Pitang Tchalla told state
television immediately after the presidential
declaration.

He said parliament was entitled to change the
electoral code whenever it saw fit, and it had done so
to allow ministers to be members of parliament, and
thus potential assembly leaders, at the same time.

Gnassingbe was Minister for Public Works, Mines, Posts
and Telecommunications when his father died and thus
ineligible to head the national assembly.

Tchalla said with Natchaba out of the country, the
army had rapidly appointed Gnassingbe because it
feared a power vacuum.

He failed to mention that the military had closed
Togo’s air space to prevent the plane carrying
Natchaba home from Europe from landing in Lome.

The former head of the National Assembly was forced to
land at Cotonou in neighbouring Benin and has since
remained there.

On Friday, a group of around 50 lawyers decked out in
their black robes gathered on the steps of the
capital’s law courts to protest the way in which
Gnassingbe had ridden roughshod over the country’s
laws. Meanwhile, university professors took their
strike against the transition of power into a second
day.

Source: IRIN

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<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Aggo Akyea
http://www.tribalpages.com/tribes/akyea

"Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets,
I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."
WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau – 1854

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