Gilchrist Olympio

Gilchrist Olympio (born 26 December 1936) is a Togolese politician who was a long-time opponent of the regime of Gnassingbe Eyadema and was President of the Union of Forces for Change (UFC), Togo's main opposition party from the 1990s til 2013. Olympio is the son of Sylvanus Olympio, Togo's first President, who was assassinated in a 1963 coup. He is now an ally of the current regime of Faure Gnassingbe, the son of the late President.

Olympio was born in Lomé and he studied mathematics and philosophy in the United States, and in the United Kingdom at the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in economics. He worked at the United Nations in fiscal and financial studies from 1963 to 1964 and then as an economist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1964 to 1970 and later returned to Africa to pursue business. Entering the Togolese political opposition, he was sentenced to death twice in absentia by the regime of Gnassingbé Eyadéma. Accused of plotting a coup together with various others, a warrant for his arrest was issued on 13 July 1979, but he could not be imprisoned because he was not in Togo.

Olympio returned to Togo in July 1991 and participated in the Sovereign National Conference (Conférence Nationale Souveraine), which was held in July–August 1991. The conference put in place a new government and a transitional parliament.

He founded the Union of Forces for Change (Union des forces pour le changement), a federation of parties, on 1 February 1992. On 5 May 1992, his convoy was attacked in an ambush in Soudou, in the north of Togo; 12 people were killed, and Olympio himself was seriously injured, spending a year recovering in hospitals in France and the United Kingdom. Following the attack, Olympio lived in exile in Paris. An investigation by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) found that Eyadéma's son Ernest Gnassingbé was in charge of the commandos who perpetrated the attack.

Prior to the August 1993 presidential election, Olympio rejected the choice of Edem Kodjo as the sole candidate of the Collective of Democratic Opposition (COD II), and on 23 July 1993, was designated as the UFC's presidential candidate. He was, however, disqualified from the election for non-compliance with medical certificates. He was a candidate in the disputed June 1998 presidential election, receiving 34.10% of the vote according to official results, in second place behind Eyadéma.

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