After Niger, is Gabon in the process of rocking? While the national authority in charge of the ballot had just validated the re-election of President Ali Bongo Ondimba for a third term with 64.27% of the votes cast, soldiers announced on television, this Wednesday, August 30, the cancellation of elections and the dissolution of institutions.
After noting “an irresponsible, unpredictable governance which results in a continuous deterioration of social cohesion risking to lead the country to chaos […] we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the regime in place”, declared one of these soldiers, saying that he was speaking on behalf of a “Committee for the transition and restoration of institutions”. During this declaration, journalists from the AFP heard automatic weapons fire in Libreville.L’Express takes stock of the latest information.
President Bongo calls in a video his “friends” to “make noise”
Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, placed under house arrest by the military, calls on “all” his “friends” to “make noise”, in a video posted on social networks. We see him there, without being able to determine when the video was shot, sitting in an armchair and obviously worried. “I am Ali Bongo Ondimba, President of Gabon”, “I send a message to all our friends around the world to tell them to make some noise” about “the people who arrested me and my family” , says in English Ali Bongo, 64, who has ruled Gabon for more than 14 years.
“My son is somewhere, my wife is in another place, and I am at the residence and nothing is happening, I don’t know what is happening,” continues Ali Bongo. “I’m calling you to make some noise,” he repeats three times.
Noureddin Bongo Valentin, son and close adviser to the Head of State, Ian Ghislain Ngoulou, Ali Bongo’s chief of staff, Mohamed Ali Saliou, his deputy chief of staff, Abdul Hosseini, another adviser to the presidency, Jessye Ella Ekogha , special adviser and spokesperson for the presidency as well as the numbers one and two of Ali Bongo’s all-powerful Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) “are arrested”, indicated a little earlier the army colonel who had read the communiqué during the night announcing that the soldiers were putting an “end to the regime”.
They were arrested for “high treason against State institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds, international financial embezzlement in an organized gang, forgery and use of forgery, falsification of the signature of the President of the Republic, active corruption, drug trafficking “, he clarified.
The head of the presidential guard carried in triumph
General Brice Oligui Nguema, head of the Republican Guard (GR), praetorian guard of deposed President Ali Bongo Ondimba, was carried in triumph on Wednesday by hundreds of soldiers a few hours after a coup d’etat, to cries of “Oligui President “, in images broadcast by state television.
This video looped at the end of a statement read by a colonel surrounded by officers of the GR, the most powerful unit of the Gabonese army, announcing that Ali Bongo was “under house arrest” a few hours after the announcement of his re-election after 14 years in power.
Polling authority validates Bongo’s re-election
According to the national authority in charge of the ballot, the President of Gabon Ali Bongo Ondimba, in power for 14 years, had obtained a third term in Saturday’s elections with 64.27% of the votes cast. Ali Bongo Ondimba beat, in a single round ballot, his main rival Albert Ondo Ossa, who won only 30.77% of the vote, as well as 12 other candidates who only collected crumbs, had detailed the President of the Gabonese Election Center (CGE), Michel Stéphane Bonda, on the air of Gabon 1ère state television.
“At the end of the centralization of the results […] is elected Bongo Ondimba Ali with 293,919 votes or 64.27%”, declared Michel Stéphane Bonda.
“Fraud” according to the opposition
The turnout for the election was 56.65%. Albert Ondo Ossa had denounced “fraud orchestrated by the Bongo camp” two hours before the close of the poll on Saturday, and then already claimed victory. His camp had urged Ali Bongo Ondimba on Monday to “organize, without bloodshed, the transfer of power” on the basis of a count carried out according to him by his own tellers, and without producing any supporting document.
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Closed borders
The official results were announced in the middle of the night, at 03:30 (02:30 GMT), on state television without any announcement of the event having been made beforehand.
This Wednesday, the group of a dozen Gabonese soldiers announced the closure of the borders until further notice in addition to the curfew already in force, in a press release read on the Gabon 24 television channel housed within the presidency.
The internet has been restored, three days after being cut by the government, which invoked the risk of violence on presidential day, an AFP journalist noted on Wednesday.
France is monitoring the situation
“France condemns the military coup that is underway in Gabon,” government spokesman Olivier Véran announced to the press on Wednesday, recalling that Paris “is monitoring very carefully the evolution of the situation”.
In front of the French ambassadors gathered in Paris, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne listed several recent crises with which French diplomacy has been confronted, “and now the situation in Gabon which we are following with the greatest attention”.
The activities of the French mining group Eramet have also been “put to a halt” in Gabon, the company told AFP on Wednesday.
The Survie association urges Paris not to intervene
The French association Survie, which militates in particular against “Françafrique”, urged France on Wednesday to “refrain from any military interventionism” while soldiers announced that they were ending Ali Bongo’s power in Gabon.
“While the Ali Bongo regime in Gabon is in turn facing a coup d’etat, the outcome of which is still unknown, the association Survie […] calls on France to the strictest neutrality and in particular to refrain from any military interventionism,” she said in a statement.
About 400 French soldiers are still permanently deployed in the country, some of them in the capital Libreville, according to the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.
The African Union “strongly condemns the coup attempt” in Gabon
The President of the Commission of the African Union (AU) “strongly condemns the coup attempt”, denouncing “a flagrant violation” of the principles of the continental organization, in a press release published on Wednesday.
The Kremlin indicated, for its part, that it was following the situation in Gabon with “deep concern”. “The situation in Gabon is a matter of deep concern” and “we are closely monitoring what is happening there,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
The Commonwealth, an organization made up mainly of former British colonies that the central African country joined last year, also considered the situation “deeply worrying”, reminding the country of its obligations in terms of respect for democracy.