michael posted on June 14, 2010 09:26
THE T-SHIRT ELECTION
Wilting under a 45 degree heat in the dusty town square of Togo’s second largest town, Sokode, waiting for the long delayed appearance of the only female Presidential candidate, I noticed a face I had seen before. The face was the same, but the T-shirt was different.
Earlier in the day, I had attended a boisterous ruling party rally in a nearby village hosted by amongst others the “Young Women’s Associations in Support of Re-election of the President” after which bottled water was handed out, footballs and white T-shirts with the President’s picture. The village elders got brown paper envelopes.
At the afternoon rally some of the morning enthusiasts sported the pink T-shirts featuring the only woman candidate with the slogan “Enfin une femme” (“Finally a woman”), a neat slogan making a neat point. But despite her lively reception, Ms Johnson-Adjamagbo garnered less than 1% of the vote in Sokode, demonstrating that in a very poor country, two new T-shirts in one day is a significant incentive to participate in the electoral process.
The T-shirt rally is the point at which the West’s concerns for African development meet African reality.
Togo is a tiny sliver of a country whose borders, like its neighbours in West Africa, cut across the grain of physical geography. The natural division is layered South to North – tropical coastline, arid plateau and semi-desert. The colonial powers for their convenience divided the region East to West - French colony, English colony, German colony. Togo was a German colony, then under Anglo-French mandate, subsequently divided with the western part going into what is now Ghana and the rest becoming francophone Togo, splitting the majority tribe in the South, the Ewe, in the process.
The French presence in Togo is very strong. Their Embassy is the grandest and the French contingent in the EU election team far more pervasive than any British presence that one would find on similar missions in anglophone Africa.
The modern, simplified and accurate shorthand for African development seen from Europe runs as follows. Africa must be saved– but Africa is corrupt and donors are wary – therefore there must be good governance – good governance means elections – elections must be supervised by Europe.
So the EU, the world’s biggest aid donor ties its aid to democratic progress. Aid to Togo had been suspended in the past; remaining on the aid list depends on holding fair and free elections. Observer missions provide an essential reassuring presence, much appreciated by the opposition parties.
The monitoring evaluations, if carried out efficiently and with due sensitivity to the local situation, can feed into the EU Commission as a useful and transparent system of intelligence gathering.
For observers such missions, provide a crash-course into politics of countries and cultures which are far from the tourist itinerary.
Michael Hindley is a former Member of the European Parliament
This article appears in the “Reform Club” magazine, summer 2010