Benin’s election on April 28th was an unhappy throwback to an era when voters had no real choice
two parties on the ballot, both of them supporters of President Patrice Talon, Benin’s general election on April 28th was an unhappy throwback to the country’s post-independence Marxist era, when voters had no real choice at all.
Many Beninois are proud of their country’s democratic record. Though Benin is poor and corrupt, it seemed to have avoided the fate of neighbours like Togo, which has been harshly governed, and Nigeria, where elections have invariably been violent. Mr Talon, one of Benin’s richest men, was elected in 2016 promising a “rupture” with his country’s history of underdevelopment. But more recently he has been keener to undermine its democracy.
Many Beninois worry that the new parliament, due to be sworn in on May 15th, will be Mr Talon’s rubber stamp. Since 1991, the year Mr Kérékou left office, a multitude of parties has competed for power; 11 are represented in the outgoing parliament. The body has been an effective check on presidential power, for instance by forcing Mr Yayi to drop his attempt to stick around for a third term.
Now that Mr Talon has neutered parliament, his opponents fear he will further enrich himself and his cronies. Nicknamed the “King of Cotton”, he won bids for state-owned assets and government contracts while Mr Yayi, then his ally, was in power. The opposition points to the changes in the electoral laws and his readiness to call up the army to suppress protests as further evidence of his intention to destroy democracy.
Mr Talon admitted before the poll that the exclusion of opposition parties “brings discredit on our democracy and on me”. By staying at home in record numbers, voters in Benin rebuked him for holding the election anyway. They will hope that sooner or later the president cottons on.section of the print edition under the headline
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