Benin’s National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA) announced Wednesday that the main opposition party, led by former President Thomas Boni Yayi, has won 24.2 percent of the vote, and will return to Parliament with 28 seats after several years of absence.
The results were led by the parties close to the current Beninese president, Patrice Talon: the Progressive Union for Renewal (UPR), which obtained 53 seats – 37.56 percent of the total votes – and the Republican bloc, with 28 seats, representing 29.17 percent of the votes, according to the newspaper ‘La Nouvelle Tribune’.
The participation of the Democrats (LD), led by former president Boni Yayi, in the January 8 elections was up in the air until the last moment due to the Electoral Commission’s warning that the party lacked the tax certificates it had been asked for in order to participate.
However, a subsequent successful appeal to the Constitutional Court gave the Democrats permission to run in the legislative elections, and they are now the third largest political force with the most seats in the country.
More than 6.5 million voters cast their ballots on Sunday in an election where representatives of seven political parties, four from the presidential movement and three from the opposition, ran for the 109 seats in the National Assembly in the 24 constituencies under the watchful eye of a mission of 40 observers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
President Talon is keeping two major opponents of the LD, former minister Reckya Madougou and constitutionalist Joël Aïvo, imprisoned by order of a special anti-terrorist court, harshly criticized by the opposition which considers the court as an instrument purely at the service of the president.
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 the face 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 in no way will he attempt, he has defended, to extend the allowed number of mandates to perpetuate himself in power.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
