No clear favourite as Benin goes for runoff

COTONOU, Friday

Benin’s presidential elections reach a climax on Sunday, when PM Lionel Zinsou takes on businessman Patrice Talon to succeed Thomas Boni Yayi in the country’s top job.

Zinsou, the 61-year-old Franco-Beninese banker surprised everyone when he quit as head of one of Europe’s biggest investment funds, PAI Partners, to become PM last June.

Despite initial denials that he was Boni Yayi’s appointed successor, he has since been endorsed as the candidate for the president’s ruling Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin party.

In the first round of voting on March 6, Zinsou beat Talon by a tight margin — 27.11 per cent against 23.52 per cent — and has since seen 24 beaten candidates come out for his rival.

Zinsou — a graduate of France’s elite Ecole Normale — was a speechwriter for socialist PM Laurent Fabius in the 1980s.

Since his appointment in Benin, he has swapped his tailored business suits for flowing robes and punctuates his rallies with expressions in the Fon language.

He also regularly reminds voters of his political pedigree: his uncle, Emile-Derlin Zinsou, a former president.

To critics who accuse him of knowing nothing about Benin, he has an answer: “Despite my work in France, I have never stopped coming to Benin”.

His supporters highlight his successful career. For them, he is the man to develop impoverished Benin.

MOST POWERFUL FIGURES

Businessman Talon turned up to vote in the first round driving a Porsche, wearing a white open-necked shirt, a fitted suit and sunglasses.

The image he portrays is of a big-spender and a self-made man, hoping for a break with the past in the country’s politics.

The well-known entrepreneur, who made his money in the key sector of cotton and running Cotonou’s port, was one of the most powerful figures in Beninese business.

But he became public enemy number one of Boni Yayi, whose successful presidential election campaigns he bankrolled in 2006 and 2011.

In 2012, he was accused of being the brains behind a bizarre alleged plot to poison the president, then the following year of attempting to endanger the security of the state.

At the time, Talon was being prosecuted in several embezzlement cases and fled to France. Boni Yayi pardoned him in May 2014, paving the way for his return and bid for election.

Talon comes from modest origins in the coastal town of Ouidah. His father was a primary school teacher.

His ethnicity — Fon — like the former president Nicephore Soglo has been seen as an advantage in his early career and since then he has maintained close links with power.

“He decided to run for president following his return, perhaps as a way of protecting himself by becoming a major political figure rather than a rich but vulnerable businessman,” said analyst Gilles Yabi from the Wathi West Africa think-tank.

His success and taste for luxury have attracted support from many young Beninese.