After more than twenty years at the helm of Togo, Faure Gnassingbé is facing an increasingly complex challenge: how to hold on to power when popular confidence is no longer enough to guarantee his legitimacy?
Since assuming office in 2005, the Togolese president has navigated a succession of political crises, fiercely disputed elections and repeated opposition mobilisations. Over time, criticism has moved beyond the electoral results themselves to the conditions under which political competition is organised. For his detractors, the central issue is no longer simply who wins elections, but whether the rules genuinely permit a transfer of power.
It is from this angle that the various institutional manoeuvres must be assessed. When a political system is repeatedly reshaped around the person who leads it, every constitutional or institutional adjustment ends up raising the same concern: is this a reform intended to strengthen the institutions, or one more device for preserving the incumbent’s grip?
The question has grown even more sensitive with recent institutional transformations. The shift to a new political system, the redistribution of authority and the creation of new positions at the apex of the state have fuelled criticism from those who see less a rupture than a fresh method of organising the regime’s continuity.
The most contested point lies precisely here: retaining power does not always require winning an election at the ballot box. It can also be achieved through control of the institutions that structure the exercise of authority.
This explains the questions raised by the failure to hold presidential elections according to the expected timetable and by the new institutional architecture that followed. For opponents, a change in mechanism does not necessarily mean a change in power. On the contrary, it could allow Faure Gnassingbé to remain at the centre of the political apparatus while altering the role through which he exerts influence.
The appointment of Jean-Lucien Savi de Tové to the presidency of the republic has thus sparked further controversy. Officially, this represents a new institutional configuration. But for the regime’s adversaries, the real question lies elsewhere: who actually holds power and who sets the country’s major political direction?
It is precisely this uncertainty that feeds the accusation that the officially installed president lacks sufficient political autonomy vis-à-vis Faure Gnassingbé. His critics maintain that the true centre of decision-making remains in the hands of the former president, now president of the council, and that the new institutional architecture has therefore made it possible to preserve his influence without going directly through another presidential election.
Although this interpretation is contested by the ruling camp, it nonetheless reveals a persistent democratic unease: when an institutional reform allows a leader who has already spent more than two decades at the summit of the state to remain the dominant political actor, the question of the reform’s real purpose becomes unavoidable.
The problem therefore extends beyond the person of Faure Gnassingbé. It touches the very functioning of the Togolese state. A robust democracy should not be designed around an individual’s ability to remain indispensable, but around institutions capable of operating independently of the interests of those in power.
Added to this are recurrent accusations of shrinking political space, tensions with the opposition, electoral disputes and criticisms relating to governance. Taken in isolation, each of these episodes can be interpreted differently. But when placed in the perspective of twenty-one years in power, they sketch, for opponents of the regime, a single trajectory: that of a system seemingly less concerned with preparing for alternation than with organising its own continuity.
Herein lies the true paradox of Faure Gnassingbé’s hold on power. After so many years at the head of the country, the question should no longer be how to remain in office through new institutional configurations, but how to durably convince Togolese citizens that their choice can genuinely alter the country’s direction.
For a democracy is not measured solely by the number of institutions it possesses or by the texts it adopts. It is measured above all by the real possibility of alternation, by the independence of institutions and by the ability of citizens to sanction or renew their leaders through the ballot.
When institutional mechanisms become complex enough for power to change form without necessarily changing hands, distrust takes root.
And this is precisely the question that the Togolese authorities will not be able to evade indefinitely: if Faure Gnassingbé is truly convinced that he enjoys the confidence of Togolese citizens, why do so many transformations appear necessary to guarantee the continuity of his political influence?
Ultimately, the Togolese debate is no longer merely about one man seeking to preserve power. It is about a political system facing a simple demand: finally allowing citizens to determine freely, clearly and without ambiguity who should govern the country.
