NIGER
NIGER – Mohamed Bazoum elected President in the second round with 55.75% of the vote
Mohamed Bazoum, the power candidate, was elected President after the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, 21 February 2021. He thus succeeds Mahamadou Issoufou who leaves his post after having exercised two constitutional mandates. The opposition is challenging and talking about an election hold-up.
Mohamed Bazoum, 61, won the presidential election in Niger with 55.75% of the vote against 44.25% for his rival Mahamane Ousmane. Voters fulfilled their civic duty on Sunday, despite the insecurity caused by the jihadist threat. On the day of the vote, seven CENI election officials were killed in a mine explosion when their vehicle passed through the Tillaberi region, on the border with Mali. A polling station chairman was also assassinated by “Boko Haram elements” in the Diffa region near Nigeria.
The turnout in the second round of the election is 62.91%. The ruling candidate won 2,501,459 votes, while the opposition won 1,985,736 out of 7.4 million voters. The announcement was made on Tuesday by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI). These results must be confirmed and proclaimed by the Constitutional Court. These “results are provisional and must be submitted to the Constitutional Court for analysis,” said CENI President Issaka Souna.
For its part, the opposition is challenging the verdict of the ballot box. Just before the announcement of the results, she denounced an electoral “hold-up” before demanding “the immediate suspension of the publication of the results”. “I call on all Nigerians…to mobilize as one man to defeat this electoral hold-up,” said Mahamane Ousmane’s campaign manager, Falké Bacharou.“
After the first round, the opposition had lodged appeals with the Constitutional Court, in vain. She denounces the crazy participation rates (of more than 95% in some communes, even 103% for one of them) in the nomadic areas of the north of the country acquired by the Nigerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS), the ruling party.
Mouhamed Bazoum won 39.3% of the vote in the first round, held on 27 December 2020, against almost 17% for Mahamane Ousmane.
For the first time in the history of Niger, an elected head of state will give way, peacefully, to his successor. At the end of his two terms, the outgoing president, Mahamadou Issoufou, had made Mohamed Bazoum his runner-up. After the vote, Issoufou said he was proud to be the first democratically elected president in Niger’s history to be able to hand over to another democratically elected president. The transition is underway. The peaceful transition that has been lacking in Niger for decades is about to take place. This is a major event in the political life of our country,” he said.
Note that the two men are old comrades of struggle since the time when they were in the opposition. They thus installed the PNDS a little more, which they co-founded in 1990, in power.
Out of the impasse in Niger, without recognizing the de facto authorities and in a climate of growing hostility, this is what Paris is trying to do. After five weeks of tensions with the perpetrators of the coup d’état on July 26, France finally began discussions on the redeployment of part of its forces engaged in this Sahel country, on Wednesday, September 06, 2023.
After initially refusing to comply with the injunctions of the Nigerien military, who made the departure of the French soldiers their political fuel, the Ministry of Armies and several concordant sources admitted, Tuesday, September 5, the World opened a discussion on the modalities of the «withdrawal of certain military elements».
At the beginning of August, the junta gave France a month to withdraw from Nigerien territory, after having denounced the military cooperation agreements that until now linked Paris and Niamey. On Saturday, September 2, on the eve of the expiration of the ultimatum set by the putschists, thousands of pro-junta Nigeriens demonstrated again against the presence of the French military, a few steps from the base they occupy in Niamey with other foreign detachments.
Thousands of protesters gathered on Friday near a military base housing French forces in the Nigerien capital Niamey to demand the departure of French soldiers, AFP journalists said.
This “sit-in” organized at the call of the M62 Movement, a coalition of civil society organizations hostile to the French military presence in Niger, was preceded by numerous rallies with similar demands since the coup of July 26, and must last until Sunday.
“France must leave and it will leave, because it is not at home in Niger,” said Falma Taya, a leader of the M62 Movement, haranguing the crowd.
In the shade of the walls of the houses bordering the base, the demonstrators were sitting on carpets and mats under a strong heat.
“We are here for as long as it takes, until the last French soldier empties the place,” said Ibrahim Abdou, a member of a “Military Support Committee”, wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of General Abdourahamane Tiani, the country’s new strongman.
On 3 August, the soldiers who seized power in a coup d’état denounced several military agreements with France, which has 1,500 soldiers deployed in the anti-jihadist struggle in Niger.
The agreements all contained different notices for their effective end, one of which, relating to a 2012 text, was one month, according to the military.
Several calls for “sit-ins” were launched by civil society organizations from Friday afternoon to request the departure of French forces.
Niger’s military regime is engaged in a diplomatic standoff with France, a former colonial power.
The diplomatic immunity and visa of the French ambassador to Niger were withdrawn and the authorities notified Tuesday in Paris of their intention to expel him.
Last Friday, they had initially left 48H to Sylvain Itté to leave the territory, an ultimatum rejected by Paris that argues that this government is illegitimate and has no authority to base such a request.
Faced with the will of the putschists in Niger who want to expel the French ambassador to Niger, President Emmanuel Macron does not intend to yield to pressure.
At the annual conference of ambassadors held at the Elysée Palace on Monday, August 28, 2023, the French President defended the retention of the ambassador in Niamey. Emmanuel Macron is uncompromising:
“The problem of Nigeriens today is that they are being threatened by putschists because they are abandoning the fight against terrorism, they are abandoning a policy that is economically sound. They are losing all the international funding that allowed them to get out of poverty. That is the reality. We do not recognize the putschists and we support President Bazoum. We support the diplomatic and even military action of ECOWAS in a partnership approach” served the Head of State of France.
The tenant of the Elysee Palace believes that a coup against a democratically elected president, from a minority ethnic group and who has carried out courageous reforms is simply unacceptable. “Our policy is the right one! It is based on the courage of President Bazoum, the commitment of our diplomats who remain despite the pressure and thanks to the commitment of our internal security forces and our military. We are clear, we will not yield to a narrative used for the putschists that consists in saying that our enemy is France,” Macron added.
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