Partial Vote Results Show Togo Ruling Party Ahead

Togo's ruling party has taken the lead in the country's parliamentary elections, partial results showed Friday, while an opposition coalition was ahead in the capital Lome.

Thursday's long-delayed polls came after months of protests in the West African nation, with the opposition seeking to weaken the ruling family's decades-long grip on power.

President Faure Gnassingbe's UNIR party was ahead in partial, provisional results from the electoral commission seen by Agence France Presse, while the Let's Save Togo coalition was the strongest opposition contender.

Gnassingbe's party was dominating the north of the country, its traditional stronghold, while Let's Save Togo did particularly well in the capital.

The most prominent Let's Save Togo candidate is longtime opposition figure Jean Pierre Fabre, who finished second to Gnassingbe in 2010 presidential elections.

In a statement, Fabre criticized a series of what he termed irregularities and ruling party tactics to suppress the opposition's support.

Voters in supposedly pro-opposition areas faced enhanced procedural obstacles and delays, he charged.

Fabre also denounced "fictitious polling stations," and said the "electronic system for transmitting and compiling the results totally lacks credibility".

The president on Thursday conceded there had been "small technical problems" and there were reports of delayed openings at several polling stations.

However, the vote was mostly peaceful.

The government also temporarily shut down an opposition-linked radio station as voting continued after it broadcast allegations of ruling party fraud, sparking a rowdy protest by several hundred people.

A government agency in charge of overseeing the media issued a statement saying the station, Radio Legende, violated election-day rules by allowing a representative of one of the parties to speak on the airwaves.

Election observers said initial signs from Thursday's vote were positive and urged calm as results came in. They noted that turnout at the polls appeared to be strong.

"It is still early days, but the peaceful atmosphere we have observed is promising and we would like to encourage the Togolese to work hard to see the electoral process to a successful conclusion," Leopold Ouedraogo, head of the 80-member observer mission for West African bloc ECOWAS, said in a statement.

The polls were the latest step in the impoverished country's transition to democracy after Gnassingbe Eyadema's rule from 1967 to his death in 2005, when the military installed his son as president.

Gnassingbe has since won elections in 2005 and 2010 in the country of six million people, but the opposition has denounced both as fraudulent.

His party won 50 of 81 seats in the last legislative polls in 2007, with 91 seats up for grabs this time.

Presidential polls in 2005 were marred by deadly violence, while 2007 and 2010 elections were viewed by observers as significant steps forward.