Lome: Togo's top opposition candidate says his party has proof of fraud in the country's contentious Presidential Election and will present it in court.
Opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre claims the ruling party intimidated voters and intentionally caused vote-counting machines to malfunction. Fabre led several hundred supporters on a march on Sunday, which police dispersed with tear gas.
Security forces in Togo fired teargas on hundreds of protesters as the opposition vowed to contest the results of an election won by the west African nation's President Faur Gnassingbe.
Fabre, the main defeated candidate in the poll who was at the protest, took shelter in the headquarters of his Union of Forces for Change (UFC) party along with other opposition leaders after armed riot police moved in.
There were between 200 and 300 opposition supporters at the protest.
"You have been witnesses to the brutality and the savage treatment of which Togo's people are victims under the RPT regime," Fabre told reporters, referring to Gnassingbe's ruling Rally for the Togolese People party.
The crackdown came as the UFC threatened a wave of protests against Gnassingbe, who first came to power amid violent clashes that left hundreds dead in 2005 and is the son of the country's former strongman leader.
UFC deputy leader Patrick Lawson said there would be protests every day.
Gnassingbe was returned to office in Thursday's election with 60.9 percent of votes cast, defeating his main rival Fabre who took 33.94 percent, according to official results announced on Saturday.
The election is only the second since the death of Eyadema Gnassingbe, who grabbed power in a 1967 coup. His son seized power upon his death in 2005. The younger Gnassingbe went on to win elections that year that were widely viewed as rigged.
PTI
First Published: Monday, March 08, 2010, 09:21