Benin’s National Assembly has voted to temporarily shut down the country’s Autonomous National Electoral Commission (CENA), the body responsible for organizing national elections, according to local reports.
Lawmakers unanimously passed Law No. 2026-14 to put the commission on ice just days before the non-renewable, five-year terms of its current electoral council members officially expired on July 14.
Parliamentary leaders defended the radical overhaul as a logical and cost-saving move. They pointed to recent constitutional reforms that aligned and extended the political terms of the President, Deputies, and Municipal Councilors to seven years. With the political calendar reset, Benin’s next major elections are not scheduled until 2033.
Orden Alladatin, the President of the parliamentary committee on laws, explained that appointing a new electoral council now makes zero fiscal sense. He argued that there is no justification for paying a newly installed council to sit idle with no elections to run for the next five years. While the commission’s permanent General Directorate will be temporarily reassigned to the public administration, the government plans to use the long hiatus to figure out a more suitable, restructured model for the country’s electoral administration before 2033.
–ChannelAfrica–
