BENIN: An election with minimal competition

Incumbent President Patrice Talon won his second term in the April 2021 presidential election, unsurprisingly triumphing over minimal opposition. Changes to the electoral code made in 2019 meant that any candidate had to be backed by 10 per cent of members of parliament and elected mayors. But there are no opposition members of parliament; the national assembly that passed the amended electoral code had been chosen in an April 2019 election in which the president’s exclusion of opposition parties was so total that only two pro-government parties were allowed to stand.

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