Togo Political System

According to Countryaah.com, with capital city of Lome, Togo is a country located in Western Africa with total population of 8,278,735.

Where is Togo

State and politics

A referendum in September 1992 approved a new constitution, in which the president holds executive power. The president is elected in general elections for a five-year term. A constitutional change in 2002 allowed the president to be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The change came especially for the then President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who otherwise would have had to resign the following year. In the same way, the National Assembly is elected with 91 members, who have the legislative power.

In February 2005, President Eyadéma, who has been in power since a military coup in 1963. Died in couped forms, the military leadership appointed his son Faure Gnassingbé as president, instead of allowing the President of Parliament constitutionally to assume power pending new elections. However, in the face of the threat of diplomatic isolation and financial sanctions, Gnassingbé resigned after a few weeks. He was named presidential candidate for the father’s party Rassemblement du peuple Togolais (RPT) and won the new election held in April 2005. In the 2007 parliamentary election, RPT received 50 of 81 seats against 27 for Union des forces du change(UFC), led by Gilchrist Olympio, son of the country’s first president Sylvanus Olympio, who was killed in connection with the coup in 1963. In 2010, Jean-Pierre Fabre stood as UFC candidate in the presidential election but was seen defeated by Gnassingbé, who received 61 percent of the vote in an election that, according to international election observers, was largely correct. Fabre left the UFC and formed the Alliance national pour le change (ANC) since Olympio formed a unifying government together with the president.

In 2012, Gnassingbé dissolved the RPT and formed in its stead Union pour la republic (UNIR), which received 62 of 91 seats in the heavily delayed parliamentary elections held in July 2013. The role of the main opposition movement has been taken over by the 2012 formed Collectif sauvons le Togo (CST), where the ANC is a driving force; CST received 19 seats in the 2013 election. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for how TG can stand for Togo. Despite protests from the opposition, Gnassingbé ran in the 2015 presidential election, with the official result showing that he got 59 percent of the vote against 35 percent for Fabre, who claimed he had in fact won. Gnassingbé could thus begin a third term as president.

During Eyadéma, Togo was one of the African countries where a formal democratic constitution was of the least practical importance. During Gnassingbé, a cautious democratization process has begun, which has provoked resistance in some camps. In 2011, the president’s half-brother Kpatcha Gnassingbé was sentenced to 20 years in prison for an alleged coup attempt in 2009.

Judiciary

The legal system in Togo consists of a combination of French-inspired legislation and local (partly Islamic) customary law. The death penalty was abolished in 2009; the last execution took place in 1978.

Heads of State

Presidents

1961-63 Sylvanus Olympio
1963-67 Nicolas Grunitzky
1967-2005 (Etienne) Gnassingbé Eyadéma
2005- Faure Gnassingbé