First in near indifference abroad, the Gabonese Election Center announced the re-election of President Ali Bongo with 64.27% of the vote against 30.77% for his main rival Albert Ondo Ossa, this Wednesday morning. The results seemed to be a foregone conclusion for Ali Bongo, in power for 14 years and who was seeking a third term this year. But that was before soldiers staged a coup the very morning of the results, regularly denounced by the opposition as the fruit of “fraud orchestrated by the Bongo camp”.
If few observers saw the new African coup d’état coming, it is because the presidential election took place on August 26 behind closed doors, without international observers or foreign journalists present in Gabon, the latter not having received accreditation from the Gabonese authorities. And, unlike the previous election in 2016, the authorities did not request a European Union delegation to monitor the election.
The ballot actually concealed the results of a triple election. With a single ballot hastily decreed in July by the power in place, the more than two million Gabonese voted on August 26 for the presidential candidate, their deputies and their local elected officials, by a single vote. A maneuver intended to promote the re-election of Ali Bongo Ondimba and his Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) which dominates the political scene.
The situation seems to have worsened on the evening of August 26 when the Minister of Communication ordered an internet shutdown and the establishment of a curfew until further notice from Sunday August 27, with a view to to avoid “the spread of calls for violence (…) and false information”.
From August 11 to 25, the presidential campaign opposing 19 candidates registered with the Gabonese Election Center (CGE) out of the 27 who submitted their candidacy initially showed a disunited opposition. However, she managed to present a consensus candidate on August 18: the independent Albert Ondo Ossa for Alternance 2023 (A23), the main opposition platform to the government.
In his electoral meetings, this candidate advocated alternation against the outgoing president. Ali Bongo invited his fellow citizens to grant him a new mandate in order to “build a new republican social pact”, in the continuity of his previous mandates and of his family which has ruled the country for 55 years without really political and social innovations.
