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THREE DIE IN TOGO ELECTIONS 25.4.2005. 09:28:22
At least three people are reported to have been killed and 13 others injured in violence during presidential elections in west African country of Togo. Witnesses told the AFP news agency the young men died fighting off attempts by unidentified men who were trying to take away ballot boxes from a voting site in the capital Lome. As voters turned out in force, the opposition claimed polls had been rigged in favour of the son of the late leader Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had ruled Togo for the previous 38 years. "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," the main opposition candidate Emmanuel Akitani Bob told AFP. The poll has essentially become a referendum on four decades of rule by the country’s northern clan. Voters are presented with a choice between Faure Gnassingbe, the 39-year-old son of the former leader, and the main challenger Akitani Bob. The 74-year-old represents a radical opposition coalition led by Gilchrist Olympio's Union of Forces for Change (UFC). Mr Olympio, the son of Togo's assassinated first president, lives in exile in Paris and is barred from standing by a clause in the constitution inserted to exclude non-residents from office. As night fell and the polls closed, groups of youths armed with machetes and clubs spilled into the streets in opposition neighbourhoods. They threw up barricades and stopped cars and when drivers refused to obey their orders pelted their vehicles with stones. Heavily armed riot police moved in to clear streets and were seen by correspondent to use teargas in at least one place. At one polling station in Lome, groups of youths faced off with riot police, shouting "RPT, liars!", as they accused the ruling Rally of the Togolese People (RPT) of rigging the vote. In violation to Togo’s constitution, he was named president by the army when his father died, but stepped down after an international outcry and intense pressure from African peers. "If the opposition are talking of fraud that's because they can already smell defeat," he said. "I do not believe there will be an explosion of violence because I trust in the security forces," he said. Mr Gnassingbe, the election favourite, was confident of winning the poll. Togo's election commission did not indicate when first results would be announced. The country acts as a port for poor landlocked neighbors in the region and African leaders, eager to improve the continent's image, are keen for a peaceful and democratic resolution to the political crisis in the former French colony. SOURCE: World News STORY ARCHIVE
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