Togo: Poll fraud claimed
2005-04-24 21:24
Lome - Groups of youths faced off with police in riot gear outside a polling station here shouting "RPT, liars!", as they accused backers of the ruling Rally of the Togolese People of fraud in Sunday's elections.
"They want to stuff the ballot boxes, but we are here, watching.
"We caught one red-handed, with several voter cards and slips for Faure (Gnassingbe)," the RPT presidential candidate, an opposition activist told AFP.
Other witnesses backed up the claims.
An official at the polling station set up in a school in a poor neighbourhood of the Togolese capital showed off a dozen polling cards he said had been confiscated from a man who had then fled the scene.
Freedom, a 50-year-old history teacher, said that in an earlier incident a woman had been found with pre-marked polling cards, also for Gnassingbe, the son of Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo with an iron fist for 38 years until his death in February.
"She wanted to put them in the urn along with her own vote," she said.
Tensions were running high in the crowded schoolyard, causing the special election security forces to evacuate the premises several times to allow voting to proceed.
Suddenly, the crowd pounced on a man accused of being a fraudster, who had to be dragged away by the security forces, his clothes in tatters and nursing a swollen cheek, to be taken for questioning.
As security reinforcements arrived to calm the situation, the man admitted to working for the Gnassingbe family, but swore he had no intention of cheating, as opposition activists emptied his pockets.
The suspect was led away surrounded by 20 officers, as the crowd jeered.
Bundle of voter cards
Witnesses at several other polling stations made allegations of fraud.
An AFP reporter at one booth saw a man accused by fellow voters of trying to cast two ballots.
When searched by a policeman he was found to have both his own card and one bearing another man's name.
At another an AFP reporter saw a polling official receive a bundle of voter cards from outside the centre and prepare to stamp them, before noticing the presence of the media and throwing the wad back out of the window.
At the same centre several voters who believed they had been recently inscribed on the electoral register said they had been unable to vote as their names were not on it.
"The stuffing of ballot boxes is occurring on a large scale and we haven't heard of a single polling station where everything is going well," Akitani Bob told AFP several hours into the start of voting.
He charged that in polling stations around the country forged votes were cast and that ink used to mark voters' fingers was not indelible.
The Economic Community of West African States, which stepped in to force elections after Eyadema's death and a failed attempt by the army to install his son in power, has dispatched 162 observers to monitor the elections.