Presidential election in Togo: some incidents reported, counting is underway

Text by: RFI Follow

The Togolese voted calmly yesterday Saturday to choose their president from among the seven candidates running. A poll without major incident, except the surrounding by the security forces of the home of one of the opposition candidates for three hours at the end of the day. According to the authorities, the aim was to ensure the threatened security of Agbéyomé Kodjo. According to representatives of Togolese civil society, the process nonetheless encountered difficulties in its progress.

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The country's 9,383 polling stations closed as agreed at 4 p.m. local time.

From each polling station, the ballots are counted and then sent to the Independent Local Commission which compiles everything at its level, reports our correspondent, Peter Dogbe who was in Kara, in the north of the country. According to the chairman of the local commission, from Kara there are two channels for transmitting the results to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The first by post and the second by hand, once all the data has been recorded by the commission.

Presidential election in Togo: counting and compilation of votes in Kara, listen to the story of our special envoy, Peter Dogbe

Information from the field, however, shows that there has still been "a lot, a lot of fraud ", regrets David Dosset, of the organization Togo Debout, joined on the phone. Fictitious voting centers were thus discovered by the population and there were ballot stuffing in certain offices, according to him. “ There are places where the community has been really vigilant; she had been sensitized and was able to detect what was being done ”. In other places, however, fraud may have taken place, regrets David Dosset, who also points out communication difficulties.

According to the Internet organization Togo, from 6 p.m. local time, the three most used social networks in the country, Facebook, Whatsapp and Telegram, were blocked. This greatly disrupted data transmission according to David Dosset. “ Text messages did not get through and even calls for certain phones. This greatly disrupted the exchange and transmission of data. These disruptions generally tend to prevent data transmissions so that people can make compilations to quickly know what each other's true score is . ”

According to David Dosset, " unfortunately the 2020 electoral process in Togo resembles the electoral processes of previous years ". Official results are expected early this week, sources in the Independent National Election Commission said.

► Read also : In Togo, the home of Agbéyomé Kodjo was surrounded by security forces

Presidential election in Togo: in this polling station of the Bé-Plage high school in Lomé, the results are compiled before being sent to the local electoral commission, Saturday, February 22, 2020. RFI / Pierre Firtion

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