Source : Sahel weather December 2024 

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In Togo, the government announced the date of the senatorialelections, only to postpone them by a few days. These elections mark the final stage in the implementation of the new Constitution promulgated over the past year, putting an end to the presidential regime in favor of a parliamentary one. From now on, senators will first examine bills before deputies adopt them. These two chambers, meeting in Congress, will elect the President of the Republic. The new Constitution, contested by the opposition and civil society organizations, put an end to the election of the Head of State by direct universal suffrage, thus placing the country in a tense political context. Some political parties, such as the Alliance nationale pour le changement (ANC) and the Dynamique pour la majorité du peuple (DMP), which includes opposition parties and civil society organizations, announced that they wouldboycott the elections. The opposition continues to protest against this constitutional revision, which it describes as a “constitutional coup d'état”.

On the security front, there has been a lull since the double terrorist attack in the north of the country in November. However, efforts to combat violent extremism in the north of the country, on the border with Burkina Faso, need to be continued, and community resilience strengthened. The country has positioned itself as a mediatorin the crisis shaking the countries of the central Sahel, now known as the Alliance of Sahel States (SSA), along with ECOWAS. Following the latest meeting of the Heads of State of the Community of West African States, theTogolese President and his Senegalese counterpart were appointed mediators to bring the SSA countries back into the sub-regional organization. The Togolese Foreign Minister's recent announcement of potential SSA membership has raised questions across the region.