Presidential election in Togo: final preparations before the election

Text by: RFI Follow

Togolese voters will meet at polling stations this Saturday, February 22, to elect their head of state. The outgoing president faces six opponents. The campaign ended Thursday evening. The time for electoral silence therefore prevailed this Friday, devoted to the final preparations.

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Despite two weeks of very trying campaign across the country, the candidates were still at work on Friday. Faure Gnassingbé, the president, received a delegation of international observers. Several experts from the African Union who will observe the poll tomorrow, also met this afternoon with Jean-Pierre Fabre, the leader of the ANC, who was meeting with his field staff during the morning. Former Prime Minister Agbémoie Kodjo also worked with his teams throughout the day.

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Opposition candidates also took advantage of the day to finalize their organization on the ground. How many delegates can they send to the different polling stations? Both sides said they were optimistic on Friday, reports our special envoy to Lomé , Pierre Firtion .

In the entourage of Jean-Pierre Fabre , the ANC expects 8,000 to 9,000 representatives in total, while at Agbémoyé Kodjo, we say we are certain to have delegates in the 9,300 polling stations in the country .

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For its part, the electoral commission, the CENI, ensures that everything is ready. Voting teams have been deployed to the field, and the bulk of the equipment has also been dispatched. As for bulletins, holograms or indelible ink, they finished being sent to the various offices this Friday. Until late Friday, the CENI, and its 46 branches in the prefectures were busy deploying electoral materials at the polling stations.

The entire system planned to be deployed in the field is entirely at this stage. We can therefore say without hesitation that the entire system is ready for the ballot.

Tchambakou Ayassor

3.6 million voters, 7 candidates

The polling stations will open on Saturday at 7:00 am universal time. The ballot will last until 4 p.m. UT. The first results are not expected before the start of next week.

They will be a little more than 3.6 million voters called to the polls in the first round of this election, including 348 Togolese from the diaspora. They will vote in embassies in Paris, Washington, Rabat, Abuja, Libreville and Kinshasa. 9,389 polling stations are opened across the country, each polling station at most 500 voters.

Seven candidates are in the running, including Faure Gnassingbé, the outgoing president who is running for a 4th term on behalf of the Unir party. Jean-Pierre Fabre, the leader of the ANC, tries his luck for the third time after the attempts of 2010 and 2015, where he came second. Agbéyomé Kodjo, 66, a former pillar of the Eyadéma regime now in the opposition and invested by the coalition of democratic forces, is running for the second time in the supreme magistracy after having collected 0.9% of the votes in 2010.

Second round also for Aimé Gogué, 73, the leader of ADDI, the Democratic Alliance for Integral Development obtained 4.3% of the vote in 2015. In the same ballot, Mohamed Tchassona Traoré had him gleaned 0.9% of the vote. At 60, the latter still presents himself under the colors of the MCD, the Citizen Movement for Democracy and Development.

The last two candidates are C14 alumni. Komi Wolou, 56, represents the PSR, the socialist pact for renewal and Georges-William Kouessan, the People's Health party. At 53, the latter is the youngest of the 7 candidates in the running.

There is all the material necessary to vote, that is to say the chasubles, the consumables, els indelible inks, dry inks. In short, all the essential equipment for polling stations.

In Kara, members of the local electoral commission are busy preparing materials

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