It is not often that one meets a young Francophone president who speaks impeccable English, who comes to the office at 5.45 am, a young man who has an open mind and wants the country to be run on democratic lines, where the rule of law takes its course no matter whose goat is gored, a young man with abundant joie de vivre, who wants to make a change from his father’s days, who says “If I win the next presidential elections, even though it is a winnertakes- all situation, I want a government of national unity in which the opposition can play a key role.”

It is unusual to find a winner-takes all victor who still want to share his spoils. It is even more unusual if that winner is so young and is in his early years of power. So I made the most of my meeting on 4 February with Togo’s president, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, 45, who is seeking re-election on 4 March. The location is the New Presidency on the outskirts of Lomé 2, the chic suburb of the national capital. The “Old Presidency” in downtown Lomé, where for 38 years, his father commanded all he surveyed, is still in use. But the young Gnassingbé chooses the majestic setting of the New Presidency for our meeting – at 7 am prompt, an aide tells me 24 hours before the meeting.

The president arrives at 7.15 am – not bad for an African president. He is dressed in a smart suit, as is the wont of the Francophone middle class, and receives me in his daintily decorated office. His smile is broad and his handshake friendly, making me feel at home at once. He is the type of man who appears larger in his photos than in real life. His English is perfect, perhaps not quite a surprise if you learn later that he studied in the USA in his university days. The day marks exactly five years since his father died, and he will fly to his father’s hometown in the north later in the afternoon to meet the extended family and perform the necessary rememberance rites according to custom. As a young leader, President Gnassingbé is unique – in the sense that he is media-shy. In the days of Facebook and Twitter where leaders court publicity as if there is no tomorrow, President Gnassingbé rather tries to avoid the media. So he changes our meeting from a formal interview to a chat. “Comme vous voulez”, as the French would say. So I probe cagily at first. I extend Africa’s and the world’s condolences to him and the people of Togo for the terrible attack on the Togolese national football team at the just-ended African Nations Cup tournament in Angola.

Life after football

I ask if he was a football person himself. He was, he says. “I played football during my school years and at university, but then I stopped. I became too busy.” Since the attack on the Togo team bus, in which two Togolese nationals were killed and one is still hospitalised, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has not only refused Togo re-entry into the Nations Cup tournament, but has also imposed a two-tournament ban and a $31,000 fine on the victimised country, ostensibly because of government interference in football matters.

CAF claims that it was the Togolese government that impressed upon its players to withdraw from the tournament after the attack in Cabinda, even though the players wanted to stay and play. That, according to CAF, is a cardinal sin against the rules of football administration. And so Togo will be banned from the next two Nations Cup competitions in 2012 and 2014. In all this, President Gnassingbé has said very little publicly, and when I ask him why, his response is quite measured. “I didn’t say much because I was very disturbed by what happened in Angola. Because Togo and the Togolese people were the victims in this case. We lost two of our citizens and a third one is still in hospital; so you can imagine the pain and the sorrow for us and the families of the victims.

“But at the same time I felt pity for Africa, because this is such an important event which takes two years to organise. I could not understand that there was such a threat on the tournament but no one said a word about the threat before the tournament began. CAF’s approach was amateurish, not very professional. “But then I was also sorry for Africa, and if very little was heard from me, it was because I was trying to keep a balance between respecting the pain felt by the Togolese people while being mindful of the sensibilities of Africa. I think Africa should aim to do things properly, in a professional manner. We always see the way Fifa organises the World Cup; it’s perfect. CAF should be able to do that. So that’s why I was so quiet. The African people love the Nations Cup tournament.

“But when I heard the explanations and excuses from CAF, I considered it very unfair from CAF, and unacceptable, because not only did they not seem to respect and acknowledge what happened to us in that attack on our national team, CAF acted like they were only [interested] in seeing the tournament continue without accepting their own responsibilities as the organisers. “Thankfully, the Angolan government took a different approach. President Eduardo dos Santos called and talked to me, he sent a delegation to the funeral of the two Togolese who died in the attack, and we did appreciate that, the Togolese people appreciated that. But not from CAF. They sent no one to the funeral. Later they sent a letter. I know Mr Issa Hayatou, the CAF president, very well. My father knew him, and I don’t understand and I’m quite surprised why he is acting like that.”

Rebuffing the charge that his government had interfered in football matters, thus necessitating a two-tournament ban on Togo, President Gnassingbé explained: “It’s bizarre. When the attack occurred, I sent a delegation led by a senior state minister. He went to Cabinda and met our players and a CAF team. That day our players said they did not want to spend one more night in Cabinda, and that they wanted to come back home. They couldn’t in fact return the same day because of the lack of enough seats on the plane. Then they said, ‘if we can’t go home, at least send us to Pointe Noire in Congo Brazzaville’. “But because the minister was sensitive to Angolan feelings, he managed to convince the players to spend one more night in Cabinda after they had been given reinforced security. That night, at about 1 am, we heard from the media that our players said they wanted to stay on and play in the tournament. But we were not aware of any such decision, nobody contacted us. We learned about it in the media. But we said, ‘how can a responsible government agree to such a decision’. So we said no, based on the atmosphere in our country. The general mood was for the players to come back home. That’s why we told the players to return. But there was no coercion on our part. So I don’t know why CAF are  accusing us of interfering in football matters. “Anyway, we have challenged the decision in court. We will not accept it. We had 21 days to challenge it, so we have prepared our defence. The funny side is that they told us either to stay and play or if we withdrew there would be no sanctions against us. That’s what they told us. So I don’t know why they are now doing this to us. By the way, the families of the two men who died in the attack have sued CAF. Which is normal because you cannot lose a member of your family just like that and nobody takes responsibility for it. ”

Elections
Well, when Bill Shankly, the long-departed manager of Liverpool FC and one of the greatest managers of English football, said “football is more important than life and death”, he was being a bit hyperbolic, because in Togo, there is always life after football.

And an aspect of such life is elections, one of which is being held at the start of March to elect a new president or re-elect the incumbent. When I asked the incumbent what he had achieved in his first term to ask the Togolese people to vote for him again, hisanswer was a classic: “It will be long and maybe boring for you if I should go through what we have achieved specifically, but I think Togo is back on track. The image and perception of the country from outside is completely changed. We are enjoying a more relaxed ambience on the political front. We are talking. The opposition is in the National Assembly. There is ongoing dialogue between the government and the opposition. We have succeeded in organising a good parliamentary election in 2007, I don’t want to say ‘free and fair’ because some people would say it wasn’t free and fair. But it was considered free and fair by independent election observers, the EU, and our main stakeholders and partners.

“We have set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which is credible and will start its work later. So I want to say that we now have a peaceful country, we now have a political consensus where everybody who wants to run for election or wants to be involved in politics, can do so without let or hindrance. We have freedom of the press, now Togo is among the top 10 countries in Africa which have a robust freedom of the press policy in action. “So politically, I think the country is back on track now. Economically, we haven’t done as well, because [on] the political side it took us almost three years to organise a dialogue and go to the elections. It was only after that that we resumed our cooperation with our main donors, ie, the EU, World Bank, IMF, etc, and now people are seeing that the country is moving. So I think, to consolidate what we have achieved and go further, I need a second term. What for?

“First: To unite the country or have a better unity of the country, I will extend my hands to the opposition parties and I hope, if I am elected with a new legitimacy – I am talking about legitimacy because I want an election with no violence, a transparent election, so that I have a strong legitimacy – with that I will invite the opposition to join me in a unity government to move the country forward.”

Long memories
Some people say it is a big ask to expect the opposition to just sweep Togo’s bitter past under the carpet and happily join President Gnassingbé’s party in a unity government. But the president is eager to leave the door open. “I don’t know if they will agree to a unity government, but I will propose it anyway if I am elected. I have already said it publicly, but the opposition hasn’t responded. So we shall see.”

Already the opposition is not happy about who has final responsibility to conduct elections in the country. They also claim their members are still harassed by state security. To both these concerns, President Gnassingbé responded that in 2006, the country decided, by common agreement, that the Independent Electoral Commission had the responsibility to conduct elections, with assistance from the ministry of the interior in terms of providing security. Regarding the opposition call for a two-round presidential election, instead of the current one, the president’s response was simple: “I think the matter is, should we change the constitution or not? But there was not enough time to change the constitution. The call was too close to the election to change the constitution, we could have done it a year earlier if we had a unity government to organise a dialogue to change the constitution. So I don’t think it is necessary to change it now so close to the election. We will look at constitutional and institutional reforms after the election. We will have a debate on that to see if we can improve our constitutional architecture.”

Champion of change
For the purposes of the early March elections, President Gnassingbé’s party has branded and sold him to the voters as a “champion of change”. So I ask him what that means, champion of change. He laughs heartily, and says: “We, the people of Togo, have gone through a very long story of good and bad, but the last 15 years have been especially difficult because of the economic sanctions imposed on the country, supposedly for our so-called ‘democratic deficit’, that we were not democratic enough.

“So, we had to break completely from all those things that happened in those 15 years or that led to the economic sanctions. That is the big change that we’ve embarked on. We want to be seen as a normal country, a country like Ghana or Benin or other countries in the region where political parties are very strong and going about their activities without let or hindrance, that’s what we call ‘change’. Because in the past, people were party members before being Togolese. Politics invaded all the sectors of the country. That is why we now say, ‘Let’s stop that and take a different course’. The other change is economic. Because of the sanctions, the poverty level in the country increased substantially. We have to change that also, and we are doing it. ”

President Gnassingbé sees the economic sanctions as principally imposed to get rid of his father. “That was what they di to President Eyadéma. They wanted to get rid of him. And we have been under these sanctions for 15 long years. It’s a long time, a very long time.”

When I tell him that his chances of winning re-election are as bright as the afternoon sun in tropical Africa, he laughs heartily again. “You know, I deeply believe in God, I am a believer, and by his grace I can win this election,” he says. “But before thinking of victory, it has to be an election for Togo, it has to be a free election, it has to be a fair election, and the Togolese people must have the feeling that they have really chosen their president and recognise him as that. So that the president thus elected will do many great things for  our country.

“Definitely we also want to turn a page in the crisis that we’ve been through. For Togo it is important. Then, for myself, if I have the trust of the country and get re-elected, it will be really to re-unite the country, north and south, opposition and government – I am sure that we can build a consensus on the most important political and economic issues in the country. I want to be able to do that.” But what if the people vote against him at the beginning of March, would he respect their wishes? “Yes,” he says. “When you are in this kind of process, you must put yourself, your ambition and your career aside. Remember what we’ve been through, what we’ve done in the past five years, do you think the Togolese people would allow anybody to take a risk of putting the country back on the verge of chaos. No, it is not possible. Another chaos? No, that is not possible. Whoever you are, I don’t think the Togolese people are prepared to let that happen again. That is why some people are saying this is our last chance. No violence during this election, and I cannot imagine someone not respecting the wishes of the nation, if he loses.”

In the next five years, if he wins the March election, he tells me, part of the priority of his government will be the reconstruction of the physical infrastructure – roads, electricity, water supply, hospitals, education, etc. He will also tackle poverty and youth unemployment in a big way.

The president had earlier mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so I followed his lead by asking him if it was necessary to set up such a body in a country that had not gone through a civil war or something akin to it, like in South Africa. His answer was straight to the point. “It was set up with the aim of consolidating the reconciliation already begun in the country. Because if you have justice and it does not lead to reconciliation, then you still have a problem. We keep referring to the past, so that’s why we said let’s take that long period till 2005 and see what happened; why always at certain periods in our country we have these eruptions of  violence. Let’s try to understand and learn from the past, so that no one can say that we refer to the past for an attitude or a political conviction or something like that.

“If there are some reparations to make, let’s do it and move forward; if there is justice to be delivered, let’s do it and move forward. What people tend to do is that, in fact the motivation of their political choices or the problem they have is not about what you are proposing, but it’s about the past, what they suffered in the past; which is not good for the country.”

Brother’s coup
Exploring the political discourse in Togo today is incomplete without a mention of “the coup plot” which was uncovered last year – a plot in which the president’s half-brother and ex-defence minister Kpatcha Gnassingbé was allegedly involved. Could the president confirm that Kpatcha was indeed the leader of “the coup plot”? President Gnassingbé has bright, biggish eyes, and when he becomes excited,  he eyes widen. This was what happened when I mentioned “the coup plot”. He laughed, and then, not surprisingly, put his “diplomatic cap” on.

“We have information and evidence that he was involved. But as you know, there is a rule that no one is guilty until proven guilty in a court of law. But we do have some evidence which we’ve passed on to the justice department.” So does he mean Kpatcha will be put before a court? The president answered: “You know, for us, it is a test, first of our willingness, our sincerity and our determination to build a democratic system and a country where there is a rule of law. I couldn’t imagine such a difficult test because he is someone who is from my family. It would have been easier for me to solve it differently as a family business. But that’s why I am saying it is a test for us, because whether it is my brother or not, I have to abide by the new environment in the country in which the rule of law is supreme and must take its course. I can’t circumvent it.”

Kpatcha is still in detention as the slow wheel of investigation grinds on. And when I asked the president if there ever would be reconciliation between them, he took some time thinking about his answer, and finally said: “My wish is that when he comes out, he will appreciate the beauty and value of democracy – meaning that, he did something but he was given the chance to make his case in a democratic way, in a court of law. “I want to say if there was no democracy in Togo, maybe he would have been killed or something like that. But because of the reforms he tended to fight against, he can now have a lawyer to defend him or have human rights groups visit him in detention. That’s the beauty of the reforms and democracy that he will see when he comes out.” Talking about the coup plot brought to mind the army. And in Togo, one cannot talk about the army without being reminded of the late President Gnassingbé Eyadéma. He had a good hold on the army and worked intimately with the generals, being an ex-military officer himself. But Eyadéma’s other side was his knack of receiving guests at the crack of dawn. Does the new president follow his father’s tradition, I asked the  younger Gnassingbé. He laughed again: “Not as early as him,” he said, “but I go to the office between 5.30 and 5.45 am. He used to go to the office sometimes at 4 am.”