West African leaders said on Tuesday they have appointed a regional observer to help reconcile Togo’s polarised political parties ahead of presidential elections in April to choose a successor to long-time autocrat Gnassingbe Eyadema.
In the first high-level visit since a constitutional crisis erupted after the February 5 death of Eyadema, Niger President Mamadou Tandja, chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), tapped Ecowas special envoy Manga Boukar to monitor ”daily preparations” for the polls.
The appointment of Boukar was one in a series of proposals by the 15-nation Ecowas to accompany the electoral process in one of its members, aiming to ensure the first-ever credible polls in Togo, which had been held in the iron fist of Eyadema since he took power in a coup in 1967.
Monitors from Ecowas and other international organisations will also fan out across the tiny slip of country wedged between Ghana and Benin to ensure ”fair access by all political parties to public media” and that security forces are observing ”strict neutrality” in the run-up to polls.
Tandja and Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure arrived in Togo on Monday to meet with both the political opposition and the government of interim President Abass Bonfoh, who was installed on Friday.
Bonfoh took over from Faure Gnassingbe, the favoured son of Eyadema who was vaulted into office in the hours after his father’s death in a military power play backed by a loyalist Congress.
After three weeks of international isolation and condemnation that included sanctions from both Ecowas and the African Union, and with the enthusiastic endorsement by his father’s ruling Rally for the Togolese People for his candidacy in the elections, Gnassingbe quit the presidency on Friday.
Under the original terms of the Constitution of Togo, the speaker of Parliament at the time of Eyadema’s death — ruling-party loyalist Fambare Natchaba Ouattara — should have assumed the presidency in the interim.
The opposition continues to clamour for his return from Benin, where he has been since February 5, in order to adhere strictly with the Constitution but it was not known how much headway they made towards that goal with Tandja in their talks on Monday.
Meanwhile, Togo’s constitutional court invested nine of the 13 members of the independent electoral commission charged with organising the elections.
A 10th member, named along with the others on February 21 by the legislature, opted against joining the commission, decrying it as a ”masquerade”. He has yet to be replaced.
None of the three traditional opposition parties is represented on the electoral commission, including the main rival to the Eyadema dynasty, the Union of Forces for Change led by the exiled son of Togo’s slain first president, Sylvanus Olympio.
Gilchrist Olympio is ineligible to stand in presidential polls due to a constitutional provision that requires all candidates to live in Togo for the 12 months before the elections.
Also on Tuesday, the government announced that funeral services for Eyadema will be held on March 13. — Sapa-AFP