The Constitutional Court of Benin rejected, after a hearing on Saturday 21 January, the appeal of The Democrats party. The said appeal requested the court to enjoin the Autonomous National Electoral Commission to communicate to the party, the copies of the compilation reports of the results of the legislative elections of 8 January 2023.
In a petition addressed to the Constitutional Court on 19 January, the president of the political party The Democrats requested copies of the minutes of the compilation of the results of the legislative elections of 8 January 2023. The party led by the former vice-president of the National Assembly believes that there has been theft and allocation of their votes to other parties in some constituencies. But the court found that the party’s allegations of electoral fraud and irregularities were not sufficiently supported by hard evidence.
To the question of whether the opposition party has no representatives in the polling stations, Eric Houndété, on the stand, replied that “The Democrats is not a party that can have representatives in all posts.
After the exchanges, the constitutional court considered that with regard to articles 63, 89 and 92 of the electoral code the party does not need the compilations of the results documents of the CENA. And that in the absence of evidence, the court rejects The Democrats’ application. The Autonomous National Electoral Commission, for its part, considered that the documents it had had become obsolete.
Article 63 of the Electoral Code stipulates that “Each candidate for the election of the President of the Republic or each list of candidates for the legislative and communal elections has the right to supervise, by himself or by a delegate duly mandated by the party or candidate in the running, all voting operations, the counting of ballots and the counting of votes […].
