Togo leader Gnassingbe's party sweeps municipal seats in elections held after protests

Togo's ruling party swept three-quarters of the seats in municipal elections held after protests rocked the West African nation, provisional results showed on Monday.

Thursday's ballot took place in relative calm, despite calls for demonstrations by young Togolese.

Since June, demonstrators have voiced concern over unemployment in the country.

Unrest is rare in Togo. President Faure Gnassingbe has been in power for 20 years.

Voter turnout was 55%

Rights groups have blamed the police for the deaths of seven people in the June protests.

According to the first results by the national election commission CENI, Gnassingbe's National Union for the Republic (UNIR) party won 1,150 out of 1,527 municipal council posts.

The main opposition winners were the National Alliance for Chance (ANC), which took 51 seats, followed by the Union of Forces for Change (UFC) and the Alliance of Democrats for Integral Development (ADDI) with 38 and 34 seats respectively.

The turnout of 2.5 million voters was 55% of the registered electorate in the country of eight million people.

Ruling party got more than 60% of municipal seats in 2019

In turn, the municipal councillors will elect the mayors of the country's 117 communes.

The Supreme Court will have to approve the provisional results, Electoral Commission head Dago Yabre said.

In the previous municipal vote in 2019, Gnassingbe's UNIR party also secured a landslide, taking more than 60% of the seats.

Gnassingbe took power in 2005 following the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had ruled the country for 38 years.