The Autonomous National Electoral Commission (CENA) held a discussion on Wednesday, August 20, 2025, with the deputies of the National Assembly on a central topic of the Electoral Code: the sponsorship of candidates for the 2026 presidential election.
While some elected officials were hoping for a broader debate on the overall organization of the vote, the meeting was strictly devoted to the mechanisms of sponsorship. A significant detail caught attention: the possibility for a deputy or a mayor to self-sponsor.
“A colleague asked: can we self-sponsor? I think the director of elections was very clear. He said if a candidate can vote for himself, he doesn’t see why he couldn’t self-sponsor,” reported the honorable Midofi Antonin Hounga.
This unambiguous clarification was welcomed as a political advancement by the opposition, particularly by the parliamentary group Les Démocrates.
For its deputy Leon Degny, “the director general of elections said: if a candidate can vote for himself, why would we want to prevent him from sponsoring himself? So, this means it’s a non-issue. It’s a false idea that some are waving around to disrupt our activists on the ground”.
Even though some elected officials, like the honorable Léansou do Régo, regretted that CENA did not open the discussion to other aspects of the electoral process, everyone agrees that the answer provided on self-sponsorship constitutes the main progress of the meeting.
Less than a year before the presidential election, this concluded debate on self-sponsorship should contribute to dispelling certain uncertainties and re-centering public opinion on the real issues of the 2026 vote.