Lome, 26 February, 2020 / 6:30 pm (ACI Africa).
Following the announcement of the preliminary results of the February 22 presidential elections in the West African nation of Togo declaring the incumbent winner with a landslide, a Togolese Archbishop has called on citizens in Togo to reject the results, terming them a “tasteless joke.”
"I followed with great indignation the tasteless joke served to us by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) in proclaiming the so-called results of the presidential election of Saturday, February 22, 2020,” the Archbishop Emeritus of Lome, Philippe Kpodzro has lamented in a viral audio message released Tuesday, February 25.
Togo’s national electoral commission (CENI) announced Monday, February 24 that President Faure Gnassingbe had won by 72 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, far ahead of the one in second place, former Prime Minister Messan Agbeyome Kodjo who managed to take 18 percent of the vote.
At the beginning of this month, Archbishop Kpodzro had, in a widely criticized move, endorsed the former Prime Minister on the occasion of consecrating Togo to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, symbolically handing the 65-year-old politician the country’s flag.
In the audio, the Togolese Archbishop disapprovingly highlights the results as announced by the electoral commission saying, “It gave as winner the outgoing Head of State, who was obviously vomited by the population, at more than 72 percent, and attributed to the single candidate of my dynamic, visibly supported by the majority of voters, only 18 percent of the votes cast.”