Legislative elections 2023 in Benin: Tax receipt, a headache for the Democrats?

While the CENA (Autonomous National Electoral Commission) closes Wednesday, November 2, the registration of files for the legislative elections of January 8, 2023, the opposition party, Les Démocrates, announced this Sunday, October 30, to have difficulties to be delivered the tax receipt, constitutive document of the file.

Until the afternoon of this Sunday, October 30, 72 hours before the closing of applications to the CENA, the opposition party The Democrats (LD) has not yet obtained the totality of the tax receipts of these potential candidates. Indeed, more than 150 tax receipts are not yet granted out of the 218 expected, according to the president of the party, Eric Houndété, who adds that no official has yet received his receipt.

Annoyed, Eric Houndété accuses the Directorate General of Taxes of not having fulfilled its obligations under the law. “The DGI has 15 days to assess the applications in accordance with Article 42. It shall make any observations and issue within 72 hours after the correction of the observations,” he recalled.

Unfortunately, “Most of our peers have not received any observations to date and are waiting for their tax clearance, which has not been issued. Some of them went to the DGI to find out what action was taken on their file, “and that’s when observations were made, they replied but the discharge has still not been issued. There are some who have responded for a fortnight, while the law says that the observations must be made at once,” said the speaker.

Questioned on the issue, government spokesman Wilfried Léandre Houngbédji assured that the Tax Department is impartial and treats requests with the same rigour. “There is no discrimination that would make the machine recognise the candidate of this or that party, to give to some and not to others,” he said.

Has the tax receipt become the candidates’ worst enemy? Or a needle in a haystack? In any case, in 2019, it was the tax receipt and the certificate of conformity that were used as a criterion to eliminate the opposition in the legislative elections. Out of the seven parties that filed their candidacies, only the two parties of the Talon government (U Progressiste and Bloc Républicain) participated in the elections. This was the first election since the advent of democratic renewal where the opposition was absent.

It should be noted that for the time being, CENA has not yet registered any candidature file. This suggests that the days of 1st and 2nd November will be very busy for the members of the committee.