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Latest update: 05/08/2009
- constitution - Niger - presidential terms - referendum
Early vote results a 'yes' on ending term limits
FRANCE 24's special correspondent in Niger, Melissa Bell, says early results from Tuesday's vote on amending the constitution indicate that President Mamadou Tandja has likely won his bid to repeal term limits and stand for re-election indefinitely.
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Early results from 200 of the 19,000 polling stations and released by state media indicate that Tandja has won public approval of the amendment.
Tandja, 71, dissolved both the country’s parliament and its constitutional court in June for opposing the referendum. He subsequently declared a state of emergency, a move that has allowed him to assume emergency powers and rule by decree.
His actions led to street protests and strikes in Niamey and elsewhere, and the opposition urged a massive boycott of the referendum.
It seems “almost beyond doubt” that Tandja will get the constitutional change he is looking for, says FRANCE 24’s special correspondent in Niamey, Melissa Bell.
But she says determining whether the vote was free and fair is going to prove a challenge. “It’s going to be very difficult to know where the truth lies, because – unusually – there have been no international monitors,” Bell says.
In the end, Niger may end up with two very different stories, Bell says, with the official figures on one hand and the opposition’s claims of massive abstentions on the other.
Opposition activists and security forces clashed during Tuesday’s voting, with police firing teargas to disperse protesters who tried to block access to polling stations.
