Government parties get all parliament seats in Benin elections

Benin's population voted for its next National Assembly (parliament) on 11 January. The results of the elections were announced Saturday evening: the government-affiliated parties got all of the seats, while the main opposition party failed to get past the 20% of district votes requirement.

No seats for the opposition: Benin announced the official election results for its parliamentary and local elections on Saturday evening. The presidential block, consisting of the Union for progress and renewal (UP-R) and the Republican block (BR) received all of the 109 available seats in the parliament, getting respectively 60 and 49 seats.

The parliamentary elections were the only recent elections in which the main opposition party, the Democrats, were allowed to participate. They failed however to get past the 20% of votes in all districts benchmark, a requirement for making it into parliament.

In local elections, which took place at the same time, the opposition party was no allowed to run and did not have any candidates.

Benin will also see presidential elections later this year in April: in these too, the Democrats will not be running, as they did not get sufficient sponsors.

Voter turnout in the parliamentary elections stood at a little more than 36%.