The Gabon opposition platform Alternancia 2023 asked the military who took power this Friday to recognize the victory they claimed to have obtained in the presidential elections, despite the fact that the authorities had announced the re-election of Ali Bongo.
This week, hours before the coup military announced the “dissolution of the regime” in Libreville, the entity that regulates the elections reported that Ali Bongo obtained 64.27% of the votes, against his rival Albert Ondo Ossa who obtained the 30.77% of the votes. in the presidential elections.
Mike Jocktane, campaign director of Alternancia 2023 -which supported the “courage and patriotism” of the military coup-, today called for a review of the electoral process under the supervision of the Armed Forces.
Jocktane considers that Ossa achieved a “great victory at the polls” and criticized the electoral authorities for suspending the vote count that was carried out last Tuesday.
“At the end of this process, which must continue under the supervision of our Armed Forces, Albert Ondo Osso will see the victory achieved at the polls formalized (…). This is the path to democracy and the rule of law,” said Mike Jocktane.
Meanwhile, the opposition candidate stated, in an interview with the French television channel TV5 Monde, that what happened in Gabon was not a true coup d’état but “a palace revolution” because it was “the Praetorian Guard that took the can”.
Ondo Ossa intends to demonstrate that the regime change is only “a facade” intended to keep Ali Bongo at a distance and, therefore, calls for “total transparency about the (electoral) results so that democratic legitimacy is restored.”
The coup military affirmed that “the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis”, stressing that the recent elections “did not meet the conditions of transparency and credibility expected by the citizens of Gabon”.
The deposed head of state, Ali Bongo, who remains under house arrest, asked the “international community” for help in a message broadcast through social networks in which he criticized the self-proclaimed Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions that declared the “end of the regime”.
Source: TSF
