Togo: President Gnassingbé’s re-election confirmed

Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbé has won re-election with 71% of the vote, final results from the constitutional court showed on Tuesday.

Gnassingbé’s challenger Agbeyome Kodjo, who was shown with 19% of the vote, had also claimed victory.

“This proclamation is final and closes the debate on the presidential election of Feb. 22,” the head of the court, Aboudou Assouma, said at a press conference.

The result gives Gnassingbé five more years in power, a blow for opposition protesters who have taken to the streets in recent years, calling for him to step down.

Archbishop Philippe Fanoko Kpodzro, the retired archbishop of Lomé, called the re-election of Faure Gnassingbé a “fabricated lie”, claiming opposition candidate Agbéyomé Kodjo is the legitimate winner of the poll.

Kpodzro, who drew the ire of the Gnassingbé administration by actively campaigning for Kodjo, insisted he was waiting for “the proclamation of the true results of that election”.

Kodjo, who had served as head of government under the current president’s father Gnassingbé Eyadéma, has pledged to use every legal means to take back his “stolen victory”, calling the Feb. 22 vote, “an electoral masquerade”.

Throughout his campaign, 53-year-old Gnassingbé had promised to fight poverty in the country through comprehensive reform programs.

According to the World Bank, over half of the population of nearly 8 million people subsist on less than $1.90 (€1.75) a day.

Protests demanding the end to the Gnassingbé family’s reign broke out in 2017 and 2018.

Last year, the president instituted constitutional reforms that would allow him to rule until 2030.