The army of Gabon announced on Tuesday night that it had taken power, shortly after the electoral commission declared the victory of President Ali Bongo Ondimba in the elections on Saturday. “We put an end to the current regime”, said a dozen soldiers in a message on television. The elections, which were already overshadowed by those of 2016 – when Bongo won the opponent Jean Ping by less than 6,000 votes -, ended in bad weather: the authorities cut the internet connection and announced a curfew Ali Bongo “has gone into retirement”, the military announced yesterday, a statement ending the rule that the Bongo family has exercised for 55 years in this African country.
In a video apparently recorded at his residence, where he was detained, Ali Bongo asked people to “make noise” to support him. Instead, crowds took to the streets of the capital, Libreville, and sang the national anthem to celebrate the attempted coup against a dynasty accused of enriching itself from the country’s resources. When Omar Bongo died – in 2009 in a clinic in Barcelona, ??at the age of 73 – Jeune Afrique magazine published that the family fortune was estimated at between 500 and 3,000 million euros.
“The coup d’état was expected by the vast majority of the Gabonese population, for whom it is already a victory that there is no Bongo at the head of the country,” said a refugee activist in France, Bernard Christian Rekoula, to AFP. It is not at all clear that the military will transfer power to the opposition leader, Albert Ondo Ossa, who says he won the election.
The international reactions – at a time when the coup d’état in Niger was the focus of concern until yesterday – were immediate. The African Union “strongly condemned the coup attempt”, while the Community of West African States (CEDAO) expressed its “deep concern” over “the apparent autocratic contagion that seems to be spreading through different regions. There was no lack of condemnation of France, former colonial power. China asked for “dialogue” and guarantees of personal security for Ali Bongo and Russia said it hoped for “rapid stabilization”.
Ali Bongo, 64, promised a fresh start when he succeeded his father in 2009 and raised expectations in a population desperate for oil and mineral wealth to be shared fairly. Eager to distance himself from his father, who depended on trade agreements with France, Ali Bongo set out to diversify the economy and protect the rainforest and elephants. He banned exports of raw timber and demarcated 13 new national parks. Likewise, he drastically reduced the number of ministers and limited the salaries of officials who run state companies. However, slow economic diversification left Gabon susceptible to fluctuations in oil prices. Deep inequality has persisted, with almost a third of Gabon’s 2.3 million inhabitants living below the poverty line.
Until accusations of corruption and, in the 2016 election, manipulation and brutal suppression of subsequent protests came. The rioters burned the Parliament and the police responded by killing the protesters.
His fitness to rule was questioned after suffering a stroke, leading to a failed coup in 2019 while recovering in Morocco. Since then, television appearances have shown him leaning heavily on a cane. He looked healthier during the last election, when he was again declared the winner.
