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Togo

Togolese police use tear gas to break up election protest

Riot police fired tear gas into a crowd of 400 demonstrators in Lome, the Togolese capital, on Tuesday, breaking up a march of opposition supporters who believe Togo's presidential election was rigged. Some 6,000 police spread out throughout the city, setting up roadblocks in the Be district, where the opposition party the Union of Forces for Change (UFC) is based.

Reuters
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UFC is headed by Jean-Pierre Fabre, who has refused to conceed the election to incumbent Faure Gnassingbe.

Protesters at the rally, which was banned by the government, threw bricks at the riot police, chanting, "We want change, we want a new president".

Fabre says that Gnassingbe won the elections by fraud. Faure was first put in power in 2005 by the military after his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, died after ruling Togo for 38 years.

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Analysis: John Heilbrunn, African specialist and professor at the Colorado School of Mines in the US

Laura Angela Bagnetto

"This is a dynastic clan regime-- clan politics at its worst," says John Heilbrunn, an African specialist and professor at the Colorado School of Mines in the US. He tells RFI  that the issue at hand is deeply rooted.

 "There's very little that they (UFC) are going to be able to do because Gnassingbe cannot leave power. There's no way that he can allow elections to go against him," he says. "He's created such clear divisions in his own family, meaning he's gone after and arrested members of his own family, some of his half-brothers [...] there are people around him who are vulnerable if he should leave office," he adds.

The international community has endorsed the elections overall and accepted Gnassingbe's re-election, even though Ecowas, the Economic Community of West African States, reported irregularities at polling stations. The most telling sign, according to Heilbrunn, is the fact that multi-lateral banks have resumed lending to Togo.

"There's been a resumption of development assistance coming from European countries, and the Ecowas statements are a sort of last gasp," he says.

But the political fallout extends beyond Togo's borders, says Heilbrunn, saying that the average person will suffer. "Foreign investors are not going to go into [...] Togo and invest money. It has regional effects."

"You have this little strip of Togo [...] where people who are trying to get from Benin to Ghana, they have to suffer the custom stops, police checkpoints on the roads where the drivers get shaken down for money," he adds.

"It's a real shame for the entire subregion. It gives Africa, again, a bad reputation, which I don't feel is necessarily deserved. But in terms of Togo, Togo is part of the problem," he says. 

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