Feature Togo
President Faure Gnassingbé, son of Togo’s former strongman Gnassingbé Eyadema, has been making strides to completely break away from his father’s era. Though he has received the approval of some leading opposition figures, others are not impressed. But he is soldiering on nonetheless. Clair MacDougall reports.
Togo looks towards the future
T
OGO, ONCE KNOWN AS THE Switzerland of West Africa and a “model colony” ruled by Germany and France, receives little media attention these days,
in part because of its small size and popula- tion and its lack of geopolitical significance in the post-Cold War world order. As such, many global media outlets overlooked one of the most significant events in the nation’s history: the first free presidential elections in 43 years, held in March last year. One year on, the government has taken
steps towards political reform and fiscal transparency in a bid to assure interna- tional donors that a new era has arrived, quite different from the days of the former ruler, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, even though his son Faure Gnassingbé is now in charge. On the Boulevard de la Marine in
Lomé, the Old Man’s old presidential palace sits behind high concrete walls scratched with graffiti. Te security booths are empty and the soldiers that used to stand behind cocked rifles long gone. His son, the now President Faure Gnassingbé, who assumed office after his father’s death in 2005, now lives in the suburbs. But despite the significant political shift, the nation continues to be plagued by infra- structural shortfalls, even though signifi- cant progress has been made in the areas of fiscal accountability and transparency, and foreign investment is slowly trickling in. Last December, the World Bank and
the IMF relieved Togo of 82% of its debt ($1.8bn) for implementing economic re-
34 | April 2011 New African
forms. On the political level, the dominant opposition party, the Union des Forces du Changement (UFC), once a fierce enemy of the Gnassingbé family and the ruling Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) party, now holds 7 of 30 ministerial posi- tions in the government. Tere has been a common perception
that political change in Togo began after the death of Eyadéma. Last year’s elections were supervised
by external monitors and deemed flawed but basically fair by the African Union, Ecowas, and the European Union. Yet, opposition leaders continue to contest the legitimacy of the results. Jean-Pierre Fabre, who ran to be president
of the UFC because party leader Gilchrist Olympio, now 74, could not meet the health requirements for candidates, claims the results were fraudulent and that he won. Fabre and other members of the UFC formed a new party called the Alliance Nationale pour le Changement (ANC) last October, five months after Olympio made the decision to join a “coalition gov- ernment” with the ruling RPT party. Te ANC has been holding weekly demonstra- tions demanding that Fabre be named the winner of last year’s elections. Tey are also calling for the reinstatement of nine of their MPs they claim were unlawfully dismissed from the National Assembly. While Olympio has been pursuing a
path of compromise with the ruling party, Fabre and the ANC refuse to negotiate with the RPT, claiming that negotiation
and compromise could only serve to re- inforce the power of the RPT and the government. “Tere is no way we would consider joining them,” said Fabre. “Te problem with Olympio is that he is re- inforcing and supporting the dictatorship, but we don’t want a dictatorship.” On 13 January, traditionally known
as Liberation Day, the day the nation’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was overthrown in 1963, President Faure Gnassingbé refrained from holding a mili- tary parade as he had in previous years. Instead he attended a commemoration service in Lomé for Sylvanus Olympio alongside UFC party members. Sylvanus’s son, Gilchrist, the head of
the UFC, visited his father’s hometown Agoué in neighbouring Benin, where he was buried. Gilchrist said he had discussed with President Gnassingbé his attendance at the memorial service in Lomé months earlier. Te day after the commemoration, Gilchrist said that although the president had made a positive symbolic gesture, he
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