Togo opposition attacked with water cannons, tear gas following dispute election

Togo opposition attacked with water cannon

LOME, Togo — Riot police used a water cannon and tear gas to attack the headquarters of the main opposition party Tuesday as its leaders huddled inside following a disputed presidential election, police and opposition leaders said.

Earlier security forces had blocked leading opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre from reaching a demonstration he had planned to lead in the fourth day of rising tension since the son of the country’s former dictator was declared winner of the presidential vote.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered on one side of the boulevard in a downtrodden neighborhood to wait for Fabre. He had vowed to lead a protest every day demanding a review of the results of last week’s election that handed victory once more to the same family that has ruled Togo for the past 43 years.

Fabre said his car was pelted with tear gas grenades as he approached a column of anti-riot police that blocked his path with fiberglass shields. On the other side of the column, his supporters clashed with police throwing rocks and setting a car on fire. Huge orange flames licked out of its sides.

Shortly after when he had returned to the party’s headquarters, police surrounded the headquarters and attacked with a water cannon and tear gas.

Abalo Issah, spokesman for a special election commando unit, said the police took the measures because the opposition was intent on going ahead with a march that the government had banned. He denied that security forces had come to destroy evidence of alleged election rigging.

Fabre claimed that security forces on Tuesday burst into the office where the party was compiling election results and preparing evidence to back up its allegations the vote was rigged. The country’s constitutional court is due to review the results later this week.

“We were ahead in the polls. It’s for this reason that they went and seized our proof … because they know very well that the results they proclaimed were fraudulent,” Fabre said.

Eric Dupuy, an opposition spokesman, said that 12 supporters were arrested.

Saturday’s provisional results showed Fabre lost to incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe, who won 60.9 percent of the vote. Thursday’s election was only the second since the death of Gnassingbe’s father, who seized power in a 1967 coup and ruled the country for 38 years only for his son to grab control upon the father’s death in 2005.

“Togo is not a kingdom,” said 27-year-old mechanic Late Lawson, who had come out to march on Tuesday. “They do not own this country. And we are not the renters of this nation, we own it too. We are going to take it back.”

The opposition has attempted to hold daily demonstrations since Saturday, but have been pushed back by riot police each time.

The elder Gnassingbe came to power after leading the clique of soldiers that killed Togo’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio. Gnassingbe held on decade after decade, surviving numerous attempted coups and assassination attempts including one by a member of his own guard who shot at him from point-blank range, piercing the notebook he was carrying.

Fabre’s party is led by Gilchrist Olympio, son of the slain president who was disqualified from running in last week’s vote after the government alleged he had improperly filled in his health certificate.

Fabre, whose family had served in the first president’s government, was chosen as Olympio’s stand-in just weeks before the vote, amid confusion inside the party.

The European Union’s observation mission in Togo did not mention evidence of ballot stuffing or vote rigging — as the opposition alleges — in a preliminary report released over the weekend.

But the EU mission did say there is evidence the ruling party may have tried to buy off voters by handing out rice to the country’s deeply impoverished people. District-by-district results showed that in the regions where EU observers saw the rice being handed out, voters overwhelmingly voted for Gnassingbe.

Associated Press Writer Ebow Godwin contributed to this report.