[The following article is a commentary on the days leading up to the parliamentary elections in Togo which took place on April 29, 2024. It highlights the contradictions of bourgeois electoral politics under the existing capitalist system where the proletariat lack a meaningful political voice. Hence the argument for an active boycott, and an emphasis on the importance of mobilizing and organizing.
We published this article with permission, and many thanks to the authors, The Front of Togolese Democratic Organizations in Exile. They are a fellow anti-imperialist group who were among those who attended the First World Congress of the United Front in 2023. It was originally written in French.
–LLCO]
TOGO: The tyrant Faure Gnassingbé is the true master of the figures and the outcome of this parody of an election
By the Front of Togolese Democratic Organizations in Exile
Once again, as was to be expected, fellow Togolese living abroad, in collusion with the headquarters of the so-called democratic opposition parties, have undertaken to put us on tenterhooks about the forthcoming parliamentary elections in our country on April 29, 2024. As usual, these compatriots from the diaspora, politically linked to certain gurus of the so-called democratic opposition, have taken social networks and other media by storm, to convince us to lend our support to this new masquerade in the making.
Once again, these Togolese are mobilizing to participate and to invite us to participate in an electoral ballot organized by a dictatorial regime. In their unbridled zeal to convince us, they are already announcing on social networks and the media that they “have the solution” to beat the RPT-UNIR in the forthcoming legislative elections. According to them, to win these legislative elections, all the opposition has to do is mobilize substantial funds to deploy hundreds of committees against massive fraud. So that’s the “solution” they’re proposing to defeat a regime that’s over fifty years old and armed to the teeth! Who can believe for a moment that yesterday’s and today’s executioners are prepared to relinquish power following any so-called election of which they themselves are the organizers? Indeed, since the presidential elections of 1993, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020, as well as the legislative elections of February 1994, 2007, 2013, 2018 and 2019, the abject regime of Lomé II has always shown to the world that, in Togo, the tyrant Faure Gnassingbé is the true master of numbers and results; these elections are synonymous with fraud, rigging, scheming, corruption, machinations and assassinations, etc. Aren’t these examples enough?
Today, all our experiences and struggles confirm that the dictatorial regime is not at all prepared to change the rules of the game. Given the modification of its own constitution and Faure Gnassingbé’s appointment of notorious RPTists to head the CENI and the Constitutional Court, bodies which are supposed to “arbitrate” grievances arising from the forthcoming elections… It’s easy to imagine what the legislative elections of April 29, 2024 will bring.
Under these conditions, only inveterate electioneering politicians, and the members of so-called civil society they drag along with them, continue to pretend that things can be different in Togo. And for the last thirty years, they’ve been playing out the same scenario: every time the end of dictatorship is announced, they come to give it a shot in the arm by calling on the people to take part in the electoral process, on the pretext that “we mustn’t leave all the ground to the RPT-UNIR” end of quote. But once the elections are over, the people find themselves back in the same situation, with victory confiscated and a manhunt under way. Some compatriots should ponder this statement made a few years ago by Albert-Bernard Bongo Odimba. The Gabonese autocrat said “no regime organizes elections in order to lose them…” end of quote. It couldn’t be clearer. By their shameful participation, the proponents of electoralism are in fact supporting the dictatorship and de facto legitimizing the power they claim to be fighting.
This confirms their nature as false democrats, saboteurs of the struggle. What the last thirty years have taught us is that, if the people and their youth are to succeed, it is imperative to distance themselves completely from the sirens of greedy politicians, those electoral saboteurs of the struggle who continue to go from negotiations to bogus elections with the Gnassingbé clan.
It’s clear that the main aim of these false democrats and saboteurs is to put the brakes on the popular momentum which – for almost two years now – has been building up again through the rise of demands and struggles in the education, health and mining sectors, and which are gaining momentum across the country. As usual, Faure and his associates have resorted to repression, imprisoning striking teachers and students. At the same time, they continue to clamp down on political freedoms, maintaining them by force and fraud. By combining political fraud with social and trade union repression, this regime confirms that it has not changed and remains an anti-grassroots dictatorship.
In this context, the only just attitude for patriots and democrats is to organize an active boycott, with a view to amplifying the mobilization and organization of the people to hasten the downfall of this bloodthirsty dictatorship.
Brussels, April 20, 2024
The Front of Togolese Democratic Organizations in Exile
TOGO IN STRUGGLE
Contact: togoenlutte@gmail.com
NEW POWER 
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