TOGO: Opposition choose septuagenarian Bob-Akitani as candidate for April election

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LOME, 15 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - Togo's opposition parties have picked septuagenarian politician Emmanuel Bob-Akitani as their joint candidate for next month's presidential election, hoping he will be able to beat the son of the late head of state, Gnassingbe Eyadema.

"He is the sole candidate for Togo's democratic opposition to stand against the dying dictatorship," the main opposition party Union of Forces for Change (UFC) said on its website. "He represents the hope of a whole nation."

The death in February of Eyadema, a former wrestler who had ruled this tiny West African nation for 38 years, triggered a political crisis.

His son Faure Gnassingbe seized power with the backing of the army within hours of his father's death and changed the constitution to make the succession legal after the event.

After international outrage, sanctions from African peers and violent demonstrations at home, Gnassingbe finally stepped down, but said he would run in the 24 April election as the candidate for the ruling Rally of the Togolese People (RPT).

The six-party opposition coalition publicly anointed Bob-Akitani late Monday after weeks of discussion, time that Gnassingbe has spent zipping around the region visiting other heads of state.

Bob-Akitani, a 74-year retired mining engineer and vice-president of the UFC party, ran against Eyadema in the 2003 presidential elections and came second with 34 percent of the vote.

But that time around, he put his name on the ballot paper belatedly after the UFC's leader Gilchrist Olympio was banned from contesting the election and the other opposition parties did not unite behind him until the dying stages of the campaign.

Olympio, the son of Togo's first president Sylvanus Olympio who has been living in exile in Paris for several years, had said he wanted to contest the 2005 election. But a constitutional clause, which stipulates that all presidential candidates must have lived in Togo for the 12 months prior to the vote, was likely to prevent him from doing so.

Analysts say that Bob-Akitani's selling points are that he has stayed in Togo through politically-repressed times and that his UFC party is traditionally the biggest vote-winner within the opposition coalition and this year, he is the sole choice from the start.

"I think the key issue this time is not who it is but that they have agreed on a single candidate. We really shouldn't underestimate the significance of the agreement," one Western diplomat told IRIN. "It's not so much the person. People in Togo already know whether they will vote for the ruling party or the opposition."

But some opposition supporters on the streets of Lome said they worried about the septuagenarian being able to wage serious political battle with the burly, 39-year-old Gnassingbe, whose RPT party controls much of the state machinery.

"I don't understand why they have imposed this tired old man on us," said Gisele, a vendor at the city's main market.

Official campaigning for the 24 April poll will begin in just over three weeks. However, members of the opposition coalition on Monday night said they still had doubts about whether a free and fair election could be organised in such a short timeframe.

"First we need to consider the problems that still need to be solved... before the poll and the resolution of those problems will determine the final date," said Yawovi Agboyibo, the leader of the second biggest opposition party, the Action Committee for Reform (CAR).

The opposition says that as many as 25 percent of the names on the electoral list are fictitious. The government has promised that the voter register will be revised between 28 March and 5 April, but critics say that is not enough time to make the necessary revisions.

[ENDS]