About 850,000 voters in Gabon are being asked to decide this Saturday whether to extend the 55 years in power that the Bongo family has already led in the country.
President Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, who is running for a third term, this time for five years, as opposed to seven in the previous two, faces thirteen candidates, including the one elected late by the main opposition parties and relatively unknown , Albert Ondo. Ossa, 69, former minister to Ali’s father – Omar Bongo – between 2006 and 2009, who had just six days to introduce himself to voters.
Ondo Ossa, who was only elected last Sunday by the main opposition platform, the Alternancia 2023 coalition, brings together the common message of change, which was very present at opposition rallies during the election campaign, which started on the 11th and ends today, as well as proposals were aimed on social issues and especially aimed at young people.
Six presidential candidates competing in Alternancia 2023 — including three of Bongo’s main rivals — withdrew their candidacy in favor of Ondo Ossa, reducing the number of opposition candidates from 18 to 13.
A notable absence from these elections is that of the candidate who led the opposition in the 2016 presidential election, Jean Ping, who, after winning 48.23% of the vote against 49.80% for Bongo, chose to leave after he judged the elections to have been ‘rigged’. advance”.
For the first time, voters in this small Central African country, very rich in oil and sparsely populated (population 2.3 million), vote for three elections on the same day: presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections.
The first two are combined into a single ballot, using one ballot for presidential candidates and deputy from the same party, a decision strongly criticized by the opposition, which denounces the existence of a ” fraudulent maneuver” aimed at favoring Bongo’s camp. , without respect for “the freedom to vote” and “the separation of powers”, and therefore guarantees the repetition of the parliamentary elections, in case he wins the presidential election.
The 2023 Alternation is asking voters to “ignore” the legislature and focus on the presidential election, “the only issue at stake in the election.”
Ondo Ossa, ‘consensus candidate’ for Alternation 2023, presents himself as ‘independent’, that is to say without party and therefore without any candidate for deputy on the same ballot paper.
The other change to the electoral rules criticized by the opposition since they were enacted five months ago is the move from two to one round, which would allow the candidate with the most votes to be elected by a relative majority.
This move theoretically gives Bongo an advantage over 13 other candidates.
The current head of state was elected in 2009, after the death of his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, who ruled the country for more than 41 years. Ali was subsequently re-elected in 2016, but by a slim margin of just 5,500 votes over opponent Jean Ping, who denounced the existence of “fraud”.
The “almighty” Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), the only party until 1990, wants to avoid that scenario this time, as it has a strong communication advantage, thanks in large part to the opposition, which was late in uniting.
As of Wednesday evening, there were still no posters showing the discreet economics professor Albert Ondo Ossa to voters in Libreville, whose streets have literally been one-color for the past two weeks, with President Bongo’s portrait and the colors of the PDG.
On the other hand, the head of state has been traveling for several months in all the provinces of the country, using significant “state resources”, as the opposition accuses him.
Ondo Ossa, a renowned economist, was very comfortable in his public speeches, but he is little known in the popular neighborhoods, among the middle class and youth, except for students at the University of Libreville, where he teaches as an associate professor .
Given Alternation 2023’s call to boycott the legislature and the omnipotence of the PDG, it is not surprising that the Gabonese parliament is once again largely filled with deputies from the Bongo camp, which already has an overwhelming majority in the outgoing National Assembly. .
For this reason, too, Ondo Ossa promised to dissolve the future lower house if he is elected president.
Gabon is one of the richest countries in Africa in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita – $8,820 in 2022 – thanks mainly to oil, manganese and timber.
However, despite acknowledging the regime’s efforts, the World Bank underlines that Ali Bongo’s executive has failed to sufficiently diversify the economy. That is why Gabon imports almost all the finished products and foodstuffs that the country consumes.
“Despite its economic potential, the country is struggling to convert its resource wealth into sustainable and inclusive growth,” and a third (32.9%) of its residents live below the poverty line, the institution wrote in April 2023.
The international organization Reporters without Borders (RSF) today condemned the “ban” imposed on foreign media by the Gabonese authorities, which refused “any accreditation” for its coverage of last Saturday’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
“The Gabonese authorities have rejected all requests for accreditation from foreign reporters wishing to cover the next general election” and they “are banned from entering the country,” RSF wrote in a press release Thursday and released today by the agency France – Press .
Reporters without Borders “condemns this absurd decision, which is an attack on information pluralism,” the organization said.
Source: DN
