Togo Prime Minister, cabinet resign in wake of parliamentary polls

LOME

Togo Prime Minister Kwesi Seleagodji Ahoomey-Zunu and his government have resigned their posts a month after parliamentary polls that saw the ruling party win a two-thirds majority, a statement said Wednesday.

President Faure Gnassingbe has accepted their resignations and is expected to soon name a new government in the west African country of six million people.

Ahoomey-Zunu has submitted "the resignation of the whole of his government to the president of the republic," a presidency statement said.

Gnassingbe's UNIR party won 62 of 91 seats in the July 25 polls, allowing the president's family to maintain its decades-long grip on power.

The closest opposition was the Let's Save Togo coalition with 19 seats.

FRAUD

Opposition parties alleged fraud and called the vote a "sham", but the country's Constitutional Court confirmed the results on August 12.

Observers from the African Union and west African bloc ECOWAS have said that the elections were held in acceptable conditions.

The polls were the latest step in the impoverished country's transition to democracy after Gnassingbe Eyadema's rule from 1967 to his death in 2005, when the military installed his son, Faure Gnassingbe, as president.

Gnassingbe has since won elections in 2005 and 2010 which the opposition claims were fraudulent.