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 Hundreds of followers of the traditional religion gathered in the
Atlantic coast town of Ouidah, once an important port in the slave
trade, to pray for calm during the tiny country's presidential
election scheduled for February.
Benin has no history of significant electoral violence. But David
Kofi Aza, a well-known priest, said last month that an oracle named
Fa had predicted dozens of deaths in post-electoral violence because
the loser would refuse to cede to the winner.
The oracle did not reveal how the crisis would be resolved, Aza
said.
At the ceremony in Ouidah, spiritual leader Daagbo Hounan Houna II
appealed to the dead to help keep order during the vote. "The
elections will pass in a peaceful manner in the name of the bounties
of the ancestors," he said.
 Further inland in Savalou, the hometown of Prime Minister Lionel
Zinsou, priests and dignitaries set a chicken on fire at a ceremony
before spreading its blood and palm oil on a fetish made out of
cowrie shells and sand.
The election campaign has been overshadowed by a controversy over
the ruling party's choice of Zinsou as its candidate, a pick
approved by outgoing president Thomas Boni Yayi.
Last Tuesday, politicians from the opposition and dissidents from
the ruling party met for discussions on the formation of a coalition
to prevent Zinsou's run.
Zinsou is both French and Beninese and spent a large part of his
life in France. Critics claim he is an outsider without a true
understanding of the realities of life in Benin.
But he does enjoy local support. "Diversity must be a richness and
exclusion is a source of war," Gbaguidi Tossoh, the king of Savalou,
said at the ceremony there.
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Boni Yayi has been president since 2006, when he took over in a
peaceful transition of power after 28 years under Marxist coup
leader Mathieu Kerekou, who gradually came to embrace multiparty
democracy.
Aside from Zinsou, prominent businessman Sebastien Ajavon and
Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, a former senior official at the International
Monetary Fund and a 2011 presidential candidate, have officially
declared their runs for the office.
The celebrations of voodoo, a traditional African spirit religion
that spread to the Americas with the slave trade, were declared a
national holiday in 1992.
This year they drew practitioners from nearby countries such as
Togo, Ghana and Nigeria and locations as far away as Haiti, Brazil
and the United States.
"For nearly 15 years, I have not missed this celebration," said a
man in his 60s from Brazil who gave his name only as Antonio.
(Additional reporting by Allegresse Sasse; Writing by Makini Brice;
Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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