SAHARA REPORTERS
Togolese lawmakers passed a legislation for the adoption of a new constitution on Monday to move the country from a presidential to a parliamentary system.
SaharaReporters gathered that going by the new constitution, the parliament only is given the power to elect the president and the people would no longer directly elect the country’s President again.
The president will be chosen “without debate” by lawmakers “for a single six-year term”, and not by the public, according to the new text.
The vote comes less than a month before the next legislative elections in Togo, but it is not yet known when the change — which was approved with 89 votes in favour, one against and one abstention — will come into force.
Currently, the president can serve a maximum of two five-year terms.
The constitutional amendment, sponsored by a group of MPs, most of whom were members of the ruling Union for the Republic (UNIR), was nearly unanimously approved.
The country’s opposition, which boycotted the latest parliamentary elections in 2018 and criticised “irregularities” in the electoral census, is underrepresented in the National Assembly.
Speaking on the development on her X page, popular Togolese Human Rights defender, Farida Bemba accused the country’s incumbent President, Faure Essozimna of influencing the lawmakers to pass the new constitution.
She wrote: “Last night, the dictator of #Togo, @FEGnassingbe, successfully orchestrated a legislative coup. His self-constituted parliament, filled with his siblings, nephews, cousins, and cronies, adopted a new constitution. Under this new constitution, he will no longer be elected by the people but appointed by the parliament.
“Faure Gnassingbé has thus eliminated the last slim chance of being voted out of office, intending to die in power like his father, who ruled #Togo for 38 years.
“Reflecting on the past 40 years of resistance, abductions, massacres, and executions that culminated in the adoption of the 1992 constitution—the only one ever ratified by the citizens in a referendum—my heart aches.
“While the day just got brighter in Senegal, the night has grown darker in Togo.”
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN SAHARA REPORTERS
