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Monday, Feb 28, 2005

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Transition in Togo

By Lydia Polgreen

Togo's African neighbours took the lead to ensure the country stayed on the road to democracy.

WHEN TOGO's military installed the son of the country's longtime strongman as President earlier this month, ignoring the Togolese Constitution, their actions seemed taken from a very old playbook, a throwback to an earlier era in African history when coups and tyrannical governments were the rule rather than the troublesome exception, and African leaders were reluctant to criticise one another, lest their own foibles come to light.

But the African response to the Togolese military's actions were taken out of a new playbook, one in which the old insistence on "African solutions to African problems," is no longer what it once seemed — a euphemism for African leaders looking the other way while despots and corrupt governments rampaged.

Faure Gnassingbe stepped down as interim president on Friday, after three weeks of intense pressure from Togo's neighbours to move the country back to constitutional rule. Faure is the 38-year-old son of Gnassingbe Eyadema, who died on February 5. He had ruled the former French colony with an authoritarian hand since 1967, four years after he helped lead Africa's first post-colonial coup.

Faure's departure has been hailed as a huge success for African diplomacy.

"We have demonstrated a capacity to solve our own problems,'' said Mohammad Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, the regional trade group that led the effort to restore the constitution in Togo, in a telephone interview on Saturday.

The swift reversal was the result of a new phenomenon: African leaders and institutions showing resolve and unity, Mr. Chambas said. Ecowas and the African Union were quick in their condemnation, and worked from the first day of Faure's rule to push him from power.

"We have spoken with one voice, we have been clear about the principle and we have insisted that there is a minimum bar for governance, and when it is not met we will not tolerate it," Mr. Chambas said.

Olusegun Obasanjo, the President of Nigeria and the region's most powerful leader, was perhaps the most vociferous critic of the change of power in Togo, and he scolded Faure when the latter went to Abuja, the Nigerian capital, for talks. He also refused to accord him the pomp of an official state visit, a pointed and significant diplomatic snub. When Faure offered to conduct elections but remain in power until then, African leaders immediately dismissed the gesture as an insufficient half-measure.

Western nations played a role, but it was small. The United States, the United Nations and European countries issued strongly worded statements condemning the change of power and later insisted that Faure Gnassingbe step down. But the diplomatic effort to force the Togolese Government back to constitutional rule was almost entirely an African affair.

"Africans took the lead on this, which is precisely what we want them to do," said a senior Western diplomat in Lome, the Togolese capital. "This is exactly how it is supposed to work."

But it often does not work that way.

Chris Landsberg, an analyst at the Center for Policy studies, a private, non-partisan research institution in Johannesburg, South Africa, who has written extensively about African diplomacy, said the tough words on Togo were a good sign, but that Africa had plenty of tougher problems that called for action.

"If only they could insist on democratic norms, irrespective of the size of country, the historic legacy of country, if only you could be consistent," Mr. Landsberg said. "If only they can find a way to remind themselves that we must start to be tough with Zimbabwe as well."In other examples of how African leaders have handled crises of governance, there were few objections when, in the vast, resource-rich but troubled Congo, Joseph Kabila was anointed to succeed his father, Laurent D. Kabila, as President after his killing in 2001. African — and Western — leaders have been reluctant to criticise other African leaders, too, who were at first heralded as hopes for a new era of democratic rule but who have since shown signs of leaning toward autocracy, like Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

Mr. Chambas, the Ecowas official, said that Africa was just beginning its journey to democratic rule, and bumps along the way were inevitable.

"Today we have made one step," he said. "We hope that we will continue to move forward in our efforts to bring democracy to our region." —

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