The Beninese opposition party The Democrats received on Saturday the permission of the Electoral Commission to run for the first time in next year’s legislative elections since the coming to power of the current president, Patrice Talon.
The Democrats are led by former president Thomas Boni Yayi, once a bitter rival of Talon, and their participation in the January 8 elections has been up in the air until the last moment.
In fact, the Electoral Commission warned last Wednesday that the party lacked the tax certificates it had been asked for in order to compete.
However, a subsequent successful appeal to the Constitutional Court allows the Democrats to become the seventh party to contest the elections.
The Electoral Commission has finally delivered this Saturday the permission to the party, confirms Radio France Internationale (RFI), which will go to the polls for the first time since 2016.
Talon and Boni Yayi have a tense relationship. In 2012, the then president accused Talon, a cotton magnate, of trying to have him poisoned, but the businessman denied the allegations. In 2016, Talon beat Boni Yayi’s preferred successor in the elections, in view of the latter’s inability to run for another term after ten years in power.
Talon, re-elected president in 2021, has promised the country’s civil organizations that he will leave power in 2026, when it is due to him according to the Constitution, and will in no way seek to extend the allowed number of mandates to perpetuate himself in power.
