On August 26, 2023, General elections were held in Gabon where the contest was between the incumbent president Ali Bongo and the opposition candidate Ondo Ossa. On Saturday, the opposition camp said that the election was a “fraud orchestrated by Ali Bongo and his supporters”
On August 30, 2023, Michel Stephane Bonda, the President of the Gabonese Centre of elections declared the incumbent President Ali Bongo as the winner of the presidential elections, having garnered 64.27% against Ondo Ossa’s 30.77%.
Shortly after the Gabon electoral body announced Ali Bongo as the winner, a group of senior military officers has gone on national television in Gabon saying they have seized power because elections held over the weekend were not credible.
The officers, appearing on Gabon 24 TV Channel in the early hours of Wednesday morning August 30, 2023, said that they had cancelled the elections, dissolved all state institutions and closed the country’s borders, and claimed to represent all security and defense forces of Gabon.
The 64 year old Bongo has been the President of Gabon since 2009 when his father died and he was declared the winner for his third term. His father Omar Bongo ruled Gabon from 1967 until 2009 when he died and was replaced with his son Ali Bongo who was the Defence Minister by then. The Bongo family has ruled Gabon for 56 years in total.
What next for Ali Bongo?
The 56 years of the Bongo family has been characterized by iron fist governance that has seen massive protests and allegations of vote rigging. In 2016 elections, Bongo scored 49.8% against the opposition leader, Jean Ping’s 48.2%, a sign that he had seriously lost popularity.
It is much possible that the population will be on the side of the army, giving Bongo no chances of seeing his third term. If Bongo relied only on the defence forces and had not created any other army group to fight for him, then his end has come.
It is also possible that such a coup like many others in Central and West Africa, is likely to attract the intervention of France given that Gabon is a former colony of France, and then Russia and America will also come in, hence escalating the situation.
As the future seems dim for the Bongo family in Gabon, many questions remain unanswered when it comes to these coups in Africa. Do these changes make things better or worse? The economic situation in Zimbabwe after the removal of Mugabe did not change. Peace and security in Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Libya among other countries have remained an issue even after the removal of the so called dictators. Only change of eating groups has happened.
These coups have only attracted the attention of neo-colonists and imperialists who come in the guise of intervention to protect the lives of citizens but end up escalating the situation to steal minerals and other resources. Gabon is the 7th producer of oil and 3rd exporter of timber in Africa but remains with one of the poorest countries in the whole continent.
