Security forces suppressed protests in the run-up to the election firing tear gas at crowds which included the former presidents Thomas Boni Yayi and the 84-year-old Nicéphore Soglo and his wife...
In 1991 the public rejected the former authoritarian ruler Mathieu Kérékou and in the country once seen as the continent's coup capital Nicéphore Soglo won the first democratic elections...
Soglo received a very public rebuke from the grand old man of Beninese politics his father former President Nicéphore Soglo and his mother Rosine Vieyra Soglo a member of parliament and founder of the RB...
The most inflammatory diatribe against Zinsou came from Nicéphore Soglo who on 21 January treated a press conference to a video clip of Zinsou addressing French politicians on globalisation in 2011 before describing the RB's support of Zinsou as 'a crime of high treason against the higher interests of our Benin… Let us show that there are still men in Benin Amazons in Benin who come together to resist a re-colonising affront to our country...
Yet Nicéphore Soglo's rhetoric is winning support among RB activists in Cotonou the party's traditional stronghold who already feared that Léhady's dry style of leadership was costing the party dear...
His Forces cauris pour un Bénin émergent now holds 35 of the 83 Assembly seats Hounbédji’s Parti du renouveau démocratique has 10 and the Alliance pour une dynamique démocratique – led by Rosine Vieyra Soglo wife of Kérékou’s predecessor President Nicéphore Soglo – holds 20...
Vol 48 No 10 |
- PARLIAMENTS
This apparent victory did not solve the President's problems; in the 83-seat Assembly the FCBE took 35 seats while the Alliance pour une Dynamique Démocratique (which includes former President Nicéphore Soglo's Parti de la Renaissance du Bénin) took 20 seats and ten went to the Parti du Renouveau Démocratique led by Adrien Houngbédji who was President of the National Assembly in 1999-2003...
His great rival ex-President Nicéphore Soglo is also over 70 and ineligible...
Change is in the air as both Kérékou and his predecessor Nicéphore Soglo will be over 70 by the next presidential election in 2006 and therefore barred by the constitution from standing...
His promotion might have upset the powerful Bruno Amoussou who helpfully lent credibility to President Mathieu Kérékou's re-election last year by standing as a no-hoper in the second round after a discouraged Nicéphore Soglo withdrew (AC Vol 42 No 6)...
9 per cent to his predecessor and former Prime Minister Nicéphore Soglo...