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Republic of Togo Elections: Togo Votes to Choose New Parliamentarians / Africa News

Africa-Togo-ElectionsTogolese are going to the polls today to vote and choose a new Legislative Assembly in long-delayed parliamentary elections in the country.

The security forces who will provide security at the polling centers voted on Monday and many say it could be an indication of what will happen in planned presidential elections next year.

The electoral system in Togo is made up of the President, who is elected by plurality vote to serve a 5-year term.

In the National Assembly or the Parliamentary elections, 91 members are elected through a closed-list proportional representation system to serve also a 5-year term.

There are 30 multi-member constituencies which include the Grand Lome constituency which is in the capital city and it elects 10 members, 3 constituencies elect 4 members each, 17 constituencies elect 3 members each, and 9 constituencies elect 2 members.

A total of 1,174 candidates are standing in Thursday’s elections, with 159 women among them competing to be part of the governing process of the country.

Political analysts say this parliamentary elections could give an indication as to whether President Gnassingbe whose family have ruled the country for more than four decades will win the 2015 presidential elections or not.

But Opposition parties were reported to have held mass protests over the government’s last-minute changes to the electoral code in what they described as manipulating the constituency boundaries to favor the ruling party. This caused the parliamentary vote to be postponed from October 2012 to July, 25 2013.

The elections were postponed twice as mediators struggled to bring the government and opposition parties into agreement on how the electoral system is going to work.

President Faure Gnassingbe took power in 2005 following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled the country for 38 years in an autocratic way.

But Mr. Gnassingbe was re-elected in 2010 amid deadly street violence in the run-up to the poll and accusations of vote rigging by President Faure Gnassingbe after the elections.

The Republic of Togo is among the world’s poorest countries and many people lack basic social amenities despite the continuity in government by a single person.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News

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