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Facts on Togo and photos of the two
main presidential candidates, ahead of the vote on April 25, 2015 ©-, - (AFP
Graphic)
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Togo votes for a new president on Saturday, with the incumbent Faure
Gnassingbe seeking a third term in office to extend his family's grip on power
into a second half-century. Voting began shortly after 8:00 am (0700GMT) in
Lome, the capital of the West African nation where 3.5 million people are
registered to vote.
Queues were thin in the central
administrative district, but in the densely populated Pa de Souza neighbourhood
-- an opposition stronghold -- hundreds were waiting to cast their ballots, AFP
journalists said.
Polling stations are scheduled to
close at 1600 GMT.
Some 9,000 police and soldiers were
on patrol, with borders shut until Sunday morning for security reasons,
officials said.
AFP report continues:
Gnassingbe, 48, has been in power
since the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, in 2005, winning contested
elections that year and five years later.
Fears of election-linked violence
are still fresh in the memory in Togo after some 500 people were killed and
thousands more injured in the disputed 2005 vote, according to the UN.
The government announced the closure
of land borders from 2100 GMT on Friday until 0600 GMT on Sunday "to
ensure optimal security conditions" for the elections.
Armoured military vehicles were seen
in the streets of the capital, Lome, on Friday, AFP journalists reported.
Some 3.5 million of Togo's seven
million people are registered to vote. They will choose between Gnassingbe and
his beaten opponent from last time round, opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre.
On the campaign trail, Gnassingbe
vaunted his introduction of free primary schools and infrastructure projects
such as new roads.
But Fabre, who heads a five-party
coalition called Combat for Political Change (CAP 2015), has called for regime
change after 48 years of unbroken rule by the president and his father before
him.
- Close monitoring -
Few people in the former French
colony have felt the benefit of recent economic growth and according to the
government, unemployment is running at 29 percent.
Years of sanctions imposed by
international bodies such as the European Union during Gnassingbe Eyadema's
autocratic regime have hit business and education, the administration
maintains.
Faure Gnassingbe is considered the
clear favourite going into the vote given the power of incumbency and the
backing of the military, most of whom come from his home region in the north.
But Fabre is hoping for a repeat of
the recent opposition victory of Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria and the departure
of neighbouring Burkina Faso's Blaise Compaore last year after a popular
uprising.
Gnassingbe won 60.88 percent of the
vote against Fabre's 33.93 percent in 2010. Some analysts believe the result
could be closer if the opposition leader is able to mobilize stay-at-home
voters.
Complaints about irregularities in
the electoral register, including ghost voters, forced a 10-day postponement to
the election.
More than 1,200 election observers,
including from the West African bloc ECOWAS, the African Union and Togolese
civil society, will be on hand to monitor voting.
The current ECOWAS chairman, Ghana's
President John Dramani Mahama, said this week that "the entire
international community is watching" and called on candidates to accept
the result.
Five candidates in all are
contesting the election, which is held in one round.
One smaller opposition party has
called for a boycott of the vote on the grounds that long-called-for
constitutional reforms have not been obtained.
Currently there are no limits to the
presidential mandate. The opposition has called for a two-term limit.
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