Togo’s new prime minister, Victoire Sidémého Tomegah-Dogbé, 60, is the primary lady to take over as prime minister. of the opposition. After her basic political speech to the Nationwide Meeting, she hosted a authorities seminar final week. RFI interviewed her for her first interview with international media since her appointment on September twenty eighth.
RFI: On the event of your first authorities seminar, you introduced that you’d “govern otherwise”. What does it imply ?
Sidémého Tomegah-Dogbé : Managing otherwise means it’s important to work to reveal outcomes. It requires consistency, self-discipline, rigor. We have now targeted on a restricted variety of precedence tasks and reforms. We need to guarantee coordination, shut cooperation between completely different departments and, above all, interact their duty. On the finish of the seminar, every minister dedicated himself to his roadmap, the place he’s continuously monitored and evaluated, and about which he’ll report back to the Togolese folks.
Handle otherwise with ladies. Ten ladies are ministers in your authorities with necessary portfolios like vitality or protection.
We consider that any improvement coverage ought to put ladies on the heart of considerations with a purpose to keep away from failure. You realize the story of Nana Benzes and all of the courageous ladies who proceed to hold their households by their occupation, whether or not within the subject or available in the market or within the workplace. So the Togolese head of state has merely determined to belief ladies, their management, by giving them positions of duty. You mentioned it your self, it’s ladies who now occupy strategic positions, I imply mines, vitality – the younger lady, she 29 years outdated. There are public works which might be the military. And it’s a lady who’s president of the Nationwide Meeting in Togo. It’s a political will that materializes.
We heard you, throughout your basic coverage assertion, insist on improvement, modernization and in addition on digital.
You realize as we speak that you will need to make life loads simpler for residents. Procedures must be simplified. For us, digital should be on the coronary heart of the whole lot we do. As well as, the administration of Covid-19 has proven us that as we speak we completely should digitize our processes. We have to digitize the administration. We have to digitize our nation’s economic system.
However aren’t the nation’s actual issues elsewhere? The political disaster continues to be unresolved in Togo.
Right this moment we should look forward. We have to transfer on, we have to get right down to work. And as we speak, what worries us most is how one can get out of this Covid disaster state of affairs. And I feel that is the place the nationwide priorities are. And I actually want we might persist with that.
However the outcomes of the final presidential election are nonetheless controversial …
The Togolese folks and the worldwide neighborhood have all witnessed the graceful working of the electoral course of in our nation. Togo is a democratic nation. It has devices for regulating and monitoring electoral processes. The Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee and the Constitutional Council have already determined this difficulty. I inform you that I’m devoted to the financial, social and well being challenges. That’s what worries us as we speak.
The actual fact is that Agbéyomé Kodjo, who continues to say his victory, has been hiding for a number of months to flee prosecution. Aren’t these lawsuits taken simply to drive him to maneuver away? To silence him?
You realize, for us, it is a matter of justice, and we have to let justice do its job. I don’t suppose anybody pushed Agbéyomé Kodjo exterior our nation. We actually need to reassure one another, what’s necessary for us as we speak is to work to fulfill the social wants of the peoples. And we’ve no time to waste.
And what do you imply by the ANC from Jean-Pierre Fabre, who has simply launched an enchantment to the top of state and the federal government to renew the presidential election? This web page is clearly not turned for a lot of Togolese readers.
For us, it’s reversed. I do know that in Togo, everybody has understood that this web page has been turned. There could also be people who find themselves not glad, however it’s important to undergo it. In any other case we’ll by no means get out of it. It’s a must to undergo it. So we actually suppose we have to give attention to the necessities. It is improvement. An important factor is to struggle in opposition to the vulnerability of our nation and we’ll work on it. We’re actually mobilizing on that, ma ‘am, I guarantee you. After which the others who haven’t but understood will take the cart. I am certain they’m leaping on the bandwagon.
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