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Electoral turnout in Benin's elections was potentially the lowest in decades, as people waited for controversial polls on Tuesday without any opposition candidate.
No deadline has been set for the publication of the voting results on Sunday, but an Electoral Commission official said the first results could be announced by Thursday.
The results themselves are hardly in doubt.
All candidates for the 83 seats in Parliament come from only two parties, the Republican Bloc and the Progressive Union, and both are allied with President Patrice Talon.
The small country of West Africa has long been considered a model of democracy, but major opposition parties have been barred from running candidates due to new eligibility rules. strict.
While many people seem to listen to calls from opposition parties to boycott elections on Sunday, the big question is not so much the result, but rather the voter turnout of the five million voters registered.
Boycotted vote
According to initial estimates of civil society groups monitoring the polls, voter turnout ranged from 1.25% to 63.27%, depending on polling stations.
"This is an unprecedented situation," said Fatoumata Batoko, who heads a coalition of civil society groups.
On polling day, their work was hampered by the closure of the Internet, which had been cut Sunday for the vote, but which has since been reactivated.
"It is likely that the participation rate remains the lowest since the beginning of democratic renewal" in 1990, she said at a press conference.
Before that, Benin had experienced decades of authoritarian rule. The transition to democracy has led to flourishing political competition: five years ago, voters could choose from 20 parties for the 83 seats in Parliament.
But this year, the ruling party's legislators adopted a new election code that meant there was no opposition candidate to choose.
On polling day, civil society groups recorded a total of 206 incidents, according to Joel Atayi Guedegbe, another member of the coalition of activists.
These include the death of a man, wounded in fights between protesters and security forces, as well as the destruction of election materials, Guedegbe said.
Two former presidents condemned the elections and demanded their annulment.
"The people are demanding the return of democracy," Thomas Boni Yayi, who preceded Talon as president in 2006-2016, told reporters on Monday.
"The institutions are no longer credible," Yayi said, calling on the population to resist the incumbent president. "Talon will walk on our bodies."
Nicephore Soglo, president from 1991 to 1996, called Talon to "cancel the vote".
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