Faure Gnassingbe, candidate of Togo’s ruling party and the son of the country’s late leader, was on Tuesday announced as the winner of the presidential election with 60,22% of the votes cast.
Earlier, rival sides pledged to form a government of national unity whatever the result.
The electoral commission said Gnassingbe’s main rival, Emmanuel Akitani Bob, took 38,19% of votes in Sunday’s violence-marred poll, while outside candidate Harry Olympio won 0,55%.
At least three people were killed when violence erupted during Sunday’s polls and parties traded accusations of intimidation and fraud.
But the rivals found a way out of the crisis on Monday at a meeting with Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, the chairperson of the African Union, when they pledged to form a broad-based transitional regime.
Tension had been mounting in Togo since February 5, when veteran autocrat President Gnassingbe Eyadema died after 38 years in power.
The army initially attempted to install 39-year-old Faure as his successor, but regional leaders insisted that elections be held.
Gnassingbe eventually stood in the poll as a the ruling party candidate, and was invited to the Nigerian capital Abuja as the expected winner of the vote even as rioting continued in Lome.
”I would like to tell you that inside Togo we’ve had difficult times, and what I want is to work with everybody … That is why we are agreeing to a national government, a broad-based government,” he told reporters.
He was joined in Abuja by Olympio — a political exile whose opposition Union of Forces for Change was represented in the presidential race by Bob — who agreed to work with the transitional regime.
”I invited Gil and Faure before the final result of the election that took place yesterday [Sunday] so that we can we chart a way forward,” Obasanjo explained to reporters, flanked by his two Togolese guests.
”We’ve agreed that bearing in mind that what has happened in the past 38 years was a government of one person, that whoever wins the election that has taken place will forge ahead with a government of national unity,” he said.
Obasanjo added that the Togolese rivals had agreed that Togo’s Constitution will be amended to ”satisfy what today we would call democracy, fundamental human rights, popular participation and the rule of law”.
The transition will be monitored by a committee under the chairperson of the African Union and would include Togolese parties, the Ecowas regional bloc and ambassadors from West and Central Africa, he added.
Following the news conference Gnassingbe and Olympio embraced for photographers.
Meanwhile, at least 10 people were injured, three with gunshot wounds and two apparently by stun grenades, at Akodessewa in the working-class Be district of the capital, an opposition stronghold, medical sources told French news agency AFP.
At the main hospital in northern Lome, a correspondent saw two people with bullet wounds. A main road through their district is now barricaded and manned by youth gangs with machetes and clubs.
Interior Minister Katari Foli-Bazi on Monday gave the official casualty toll on Sunday as ”one dead and some wounded”, but hospital and diplomatic sources gave higher figures.
Former colonial power France said it ”notes with satisfaction that Togo’s presidential election took place in satisfactory conditions, even if we’ve had to take account of isolated incidents”.
The United States said late on Monday it was too early to gauge the extent of irregularities, but looked forward to a ”peaceful and representative outcome”.
The United States ”strongly” urged the people of Togo and their political leaders ”to do everything in their power to ensure that their country remains calm and peaceful,” deputy State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli told reporters.” – Sapa-AFP