His name has been associated with Gabon for over 55 years. She led the country, first through Omar, from 1967 to 2009, when her son Ali succeeded her, until her overthrow on Wednesday.
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Albert-Bernard Bongo was not yet 32 when he succeeded Léon Mba, at the end of 1967, as head of the Gabonese state, with the support of France. The partnership with the former metropolis will continue for more than four decades, at the heart of the French-African system, until the death in June 2009 of the man who had become Omar in the 1970s, when Gabon had joined the organization of exporting countries. of petroleum.
Rather than president like his father, it was as a singer like his mother Patience Dabany that young Ali Bongo dreamed of being. His essay in funk alongside James Brown’s musicians is inconclusive. After studying in France, at the age of less than thirty, he returned to Libreville, first to his father’s office, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then to Defence.
Succession
In 2009, he was nominated as the candidate of the ruling party, the PDG, to succeed his father, in comparison with whom he appears first ” erased “Faced with the caciques of the party. His re-election in 2016 by 5,500 votes was contested by opponent Jean Ping and gave rise to violence.
Victim of a stroke in 2018, Ali Bongo spent ten months recovering outside Gabon. In his absence, in 2019, a coup attempt takes place, it lasts only one day. In 2021, it is quoted in the Pandora Paperswhich reveal the names of personalities suspected of hiding money in tax havens.
When on July 9 of this year, Ali Bongo announced his candidacy for a third presidential term, the opposition denounced ” dynastic power “. In recent months he had tried to prove that he had regained his health and his abilities, but his opponents suspected that he was at the same time preparing a new generation of Bongos for the exercise of power. His son Noureddine is thus one of the personalities arrested today.
The putsch of August 30 took place without opposition against a family that the population generally associates with a lavish lifestyle, as evidenced by the various cases of ill-gotten gains abroad.