Benin: Following the installation of the Senate, the oldest member, Elisabeth Pognon, expresses her anxiety

The new generation may know nothing about her. Elisabeth Pognon is one of Benin's greatest intellectual figures. The country's first female magistrate in 1965 at the age of 28, she witnessed the incessant coups d'état that punctuated Benin's political life in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the tribulations of General Mathieu Kérékou's Marxist-Leninist regime.

Member by right of the Senate

Following the 1990 National Conference of the Nation's Vital Forces, she was appointed President of the Constitutional Court, a position she held from 1993 to 1998. It was her Court that proclaimed the defeat of incumbent President Nicéphore Soglo in 1996. Having entered active retirement in the 2000s, Elisabeth Pognon reappeared yesterday, Thursday, July 30, 2026, for the Senate's installation ceremony in Porto-Novo. She presided over the ceremony in her capacity as the second-oldest member of the Senate.

Indeed, the Beninese Senate, an invention of the constitutional reform of November 2025, is composed of former presidents of the Republic, the Constitutional Court and Parliament in addition to other appointed members.

It is therefore in her capacity as former president of the Constitutional Court that Ms. Pognon sits in this upper house of the Beninese Parliament.

"Will we live up to the country's expectations? I sincerely hope so."

Yesterday, Thursday, just after the senators' installation ceremony, she told Parliament's television that she was "a little bit anxious" about the weight of the responsibility.

“Will we live up to the country’s expectations? I fervently hope so, not only for myself, but for all the councilors, because when the first institution misses the mark in terms of launch and acceptance, it takes years and years to rectify the situation. So I truly fervently hope that these first senators will not disappoint the expectations of our country, of our people, and that we will be equal to the tasks entrusted to us,” declared Ms. Pognon. She hopes that all Beninese will include the Senate in their “wishes for its success.”