By Siddhartha Mitter
Quick: Name the world's longest serving head of state. (The Queen of England doesn't count. We're talking about leaders with executive powers.) Answer: It's Fidel Castro, who's been guiding — or misguiding, depending on your view - the Cuban revolution since 1959.
But here's a more difficult follow-up: Who comes next? Who places second after Fidel in the leader longevity sweepstakes? The answer is General Gnassingbe Eyadema, who has led the West African nation of Togo for over thirty-five years — since 1967.
General Eyadema is one of the last of the "dinosaurs" — Africa's post-independence dictators who remade countries virtually in their image and clung to power by all means necessary. Most have died, by now; a few have been overthrown. But Eyadema is only 67 years old, and isn't going away. Two weeks ago, on Friday, June 20th, he was sworn in for yet another five year term as Togo's president. In his oath of office, he solemnly swore "to respect and defend the constitution that the Togolese people have freely given themselves," to be guided "only by the general interest and the respect of human rights," to devote "all of [his] strength to the promotion of development, the common good, peace and national unity," and "to conduct [himself] in all as a faithful and loyal servant of the people."
Witnessing these fine words at the inauguration ceremony were the presidents of Niger, Senegal, Benin, Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau, along with Ange-Felix Patasse, the recently deposed president of the Central African Republic, and a government minister from France. The praise singers and traditional musicians and dancers were out in force: as Abdoulaye Wade, the president of Senegal, commented to a journalist, "Togo has always been a capital of folklore."
There are many things wrong with this picture; here are a few. For decades, Eyadema has kept Togo in repression and fear. Opposition parties, legal since the early 1990s, are allowed just enough room to sustain the claim that the country is a democracy, in which pluralism is gradually "learning to take root." When power is at stake, the opposition is quashed either with tanks in the street (as in 1992), or by manipulating the constitution and rigging elections. In the previous constitution, Eyadema imposed term limits on himself which forbade him from running this year. Last December he simply had that clause removed by the parliament, which does his will.
There was still the matter of a credible opponent — Gilchrist Olympio, a long-time political figure and the son of Togo's first independent president. Depending on the political climate and his personal safety, Olympio had been living in and out of exile in France, but retained the credibility and the name recognition to pose a serious challenge. Eyadema had him spuriously disqualified because his application was "incomplete" and he could not submit a required tax form. (The election commission too does Eyadema's will.)
Going into the June 1 election, the outcome was so clearly pre-determined that many international observer teams decided to stay away. Others attended, however, and a network of local activists also fanned out across the country equipped with cellphones to call in any observed abuses. On election day, the land and cell phone networks mysteriously went down.
In the end, the election commission produced a tally which gave Eyadema victory with 57 percent of the vote. Amid an intense security clampdown in Lome, the opposition parties made bleatings about not recognizing Eyadema's election, but were unable to back these up with mass action. And so to the unstoppable conclusion: Eyadema's re-inauguration, and five more years of entropy and neglect.
It's a fair guess that nobody — not the ruling party, not the opposition, not the other African heads of state at the ceremony, not the French — believes the 57 percent number. The process as Eyadema devised it (and it's hardly his own invention, but rather the depressing norm in too many countries) is not intended to convince astute observers, but rather to create a veil of procedure, a legalistic sham that does double duty by adding barriers for the opposition while producing a fiction for consumption by ordinary people.
It doesn't help that the opposition has been disunited throughout the process. Even Gilchrist Olympio seemed unlikely to rally all the anti-Eyadema forces together, and in his absence the splintering only grew worse. Two opposition candidates, Emmanuel Bob Akitani (Olympio's less charismatic surrogate) and Dahuku Pere, have each claimed victory as well, offering their own unlikely voting tallies. The "civil society" network that sent out the activist observers has, meanwhile, returned its own estimates, which place Akitani first with 36 percent, followed by Pere and Eyadema nearly tied at 22 to 23 percent. Some overseas Togolese, such as those in the US-based, non-partisan Togo relief fund, feel that this, more balanced tally is the one closest to the truth, but what good can be done at this point?
In the post-mortem, many observers are pointing to Eyadema's extreme and long-lasting hold on his country, which will be difficult or impossible to break from within while he is still alive. Others blame the opposition for failing to unite around a single candidate. That is a fair accusation: Togo is a country of only five million people with a narrow political elite. Among such a small group, failing to make the compromises necessary to form a united front is close to irresponsible. It may also be that in this small political elite, personal rivalries are so intense that they trump the higher purpose. That, too, would be a familiar scenario.
If the opposition won't unite, it's difficult to expect other African leaders to snub one of their peers in the absence of a credible alternative. Because for all his flaws, Eyadema functions in the region not as a disturbance but rather as a stabilizer. His sheer longevity in power makes him a doyen - an elder statesman whose seniority confers on him a legitimacy among his peers that he may not have at home. Like Omar Bongo, the similarly dubious but long-lasting leader of Gabon, Eyadema has convening power: he can host negotiations among parties to a civil war, he can help smooth out spats between other, more junior leaders, and because he is listened to, he is an influential conduit in the region for French (and American) policy, a sounding-board and a message carrier.
And that, in the end, is the secret to Eyadema's success: he has made himself useful. Famously ruthless and arbitrary at home, a cartoon-character dictator behind his trademark dark glasses, surrounded by sycophants, he is nevertheless a resource and symbol of stability in a deeply tormented region. Outside Togo, Eyadema's crimes have drawn little attention beyond the specialized circles of human rights activists; and the natural resources he has plundered - phosphates, fruit — are of little interest to the world economy. So the powerful nations and the world media have by and large given the whole affair of the Togolese election a pass.
It's the Togolese people who have to live with this dictator, as they have done for 35 years already. And the way things are looking, it's strictly up to them — and to the Togolese Diaspora, increasingly frustrated by both Eyadema’s iron grip and the opposition’s inadequacies — to find a way to make things change.
First published: July 1, 2003
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