Benin's President continues to assemble the building blocks for an undemocratic election in 2021

I need to rename this blog! I haven't been keeping up with the daily schedule, not even close. But it's summer - maybe I'll get back on schedule.

Let's do a quick catch-up with Benin, which is my spiritual home in Africa.

An article about this year's local elections is called "Benin's 2021 presidential election is already decided." That's weird -- why would local elections (for 1,815 "city council" members) have such an effect on a presidential election in the following year?

There have been signs of Patrice Talon's aspirations for power for years. In 2012 he was arrested for his alleged role in a plot to poison then-president Boni Yayi, whose campaigns Talon had previously helped fund. Talon was also implicated in a coup attempt against the president in 2013, and then pardoned in 2014.

In 2016, Talon defeated Boni Yayi's selected successor for the presidency. Soon after he was elected, Talon attempted to push constitutional amendments through the legislature on a so-called "emergency basis." This attempt failed -- opponents feared that Talon sought to use one of the amendments - to align the (4-year) legislative election schedule with the (5-year) presidential election schedule - to extend his term to 2026, "the theory being that it would take five years to wait for the end of the next legislative term to hold both elections on the same date."

In 2018, Talon began to make a series of moves, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, that look likely to complete an undemocratic picture in the form of an effectively uncontested presidential election in 2021.

Among the pieces:

• In February 2018, Talon appointed his former personal lawyer as president of the Constitutional Court
• In September 2018, the National Assembly passed a new electoral code, whose provisions included (1) increasing the threshold for a party to win legislative seats to 10% of the vote, (2) expensive registration fees for both presidential candidates and legislative party lists, and (3) presidential candidates must have 16 "sponsors" from among the 83 National Assembly members and 77 mayors. 
• In October 2018, a newly formed anticorruption court sentenced Sébastien Ajavon, the 3rd place finisher in the 2016 presidential election, to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking.  Ajavon went into exile. 
• In February 2019, the Constitutional Court (under Talon's former personal lawyer) created a requirement for parties to contest the legislative election - they must acquire a "certificate of conformity" from the Ministry of the Interior (i.e., from a member of Talon's government). 
• In March 2019, the election commission announced that only two parties had successfully obtained this certificate -- two newly-created parties that support Talon. 
• In the April 2019 National Assembly election, boycotted by supporters of the opposition, these two pro-Talon parties won all seats in the national assembly. 
• Former president and leader of the main opposition party (FCBE), Boni Yayi, was placed under house arrest for protesting the unopposed election; upon his release in June he fled into exile. 
• In August 2019, Lionel Zinsou, who placed 2nd in the 2016 presidential election, also in exile, was banned from running for office for 5 years for alleged 2016 campaign violations. 

All of these pieces were enough to lower Benin's Freedom House rating from Free to Partly Free. The table was set for the local elections this past May.

The requirement, from the September 2018 electoral code, that parties must win 10 percent of the national vote led to parties with strong regional but insufficient national support (PRD and UDBN) were unable to win any local council seats. These institutional hurdles led some opposition politicians to call for a boycott of the election, although turnout was a reasonable 50 percent. The only opposition party to win any councillor seats was therefore FCBE, with 15%. The other 85% are controlled by the two pro-Talon parties. 

It will therefore be difficult for FCBE to win enough of the 77 mayoral seats to produce 16 sponsors for a true opposition candidate (since the 83 National Assembly seats are monopolized by the pro-Talon parties). In any case, the top three opposition politicians are in exile after fleeing from pro-Talon elements of the judiciary. 

Talon therefore looks likely to coast to re-election next year against a hand-picked opponent.