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Togo

Togolese voters won't accept fraudulent election results, says opposition

Togo’s opposition warned on Friday that tampering with this weekend’s election results could trigger violence. President Faure Gnassingbe looks set to win a third term in Saturday’s election, lengthening his family’s rule over Togo to more than 50 years. Jean-Pierre Fabre of the National Alliance for Change (ANC) party is likely to be Gnassingbe’s closest rival. The opposition has made complaints about the system for tallying results. RFI spoke to Jean-Claude Delava Codjo, secretary general of the ANC.

Faure Gnassingbe waves to a crowd at a campaign rally in Tado, Togo, 13 April 2015
Faure Gnassingbe waves to a crowd at a campaign rally in Tado, Togo, 13 April 2015 Reuters/Noel Tadegnon
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Incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe is widely expected to win.

He can only win if the election is not free and fair. He can pretend he won, but if it’s transparent, free and fair, he’ll never, never win. Because people are fed up, fed up with this Gnassingbe family, of this dictatorship, everybody needs and wants a change. They gather around Jean-Pierre Fabre, the opposition leader of this country.

Could you tell us about the preparations for the election?

We still have a big problem with the preparations because the regime intends to use a fake system to collect the results. This system is a lousy thing. When you enter a result you never get what you entered, you get a fake result, a result in favour of the incumbent president. We call on election observers, we called on ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and the ECOWAS president came twice to this country. We asked them to tell the regime to not use this fake system of collating election results. If not, this will trigger violence in this country and we don’t want election violence again.

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