Former Minister of National Education of President Omar Bongo Ondimba, Albert Ondo Ossa faces this Saturday in the Gabonese presidential election the outgoing Ali Bongo Ondimba. Pure product of the academic seraglio, the one who is perceived as a technocrat will have to convince that he is not only an eminent economist, but also the man who will be able to breathe new life into Gabon. That’s good because his stated objective is nothing more than to embody the “figure of change”. To have been chosen “consensual candidate” of the main opposition platform, Alternance 2023, against political tenors yet favorites, and only a week before the ballot, Albert Ondo Ossa must have a secret weapon. Will she be effective against her rival, already experienced in at least two electoral contests for the conquest of the presidency of the Republic, contests which have allowed him to lead the country for fourteen years?
The results of this Saturday’s poll will tell. In the meantime, to seduce voters, he insists that “60 years of Bongo is too much! “. Also a candidate in 2009, Mr. Ondo Ossa, father of five children, probably has a more bitter memory, with only 0.20% of the vote. An attempt “without preparation, without means, and with the verb university”, recognizes Ernest Nkili, one of his closest collaborators.
Born in 1954 into a modest family in the north of the country, he has an academic profile. Holder of a double doctorate in economics in France, he obtained the aggregation in Senegal. First a professor at the University of Libreville, he became the dean of the faculty of law and economics, culminating in a university career that enabled him to acquire significant notoriety among the political and economic elites in the years 1990. But “the amphitheater and the presidential election are different terrains”, tance Séverin Joe Malph Divassa, deputy secretary general of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) of Mr. Bongo, taking on board the critics pointing to a too technocratic profile , and his “lack of presence on the ground”.
It was with the status of a figure in civil society that he entered the government of Omar Bongo in 2006, inheriting until 2009 the portfolios of National Education, Higher Education, and Research. “He fell like a hair on the soup of the system. Members of the government or PDG activists eyed this post. Giving it to Albert, who comes out of nowhere, aroused jealousy, “recalls Yacinthe Mba Allogo, former communications advisor to Mr. Ondo Ossa between 2006 and 2009.
Upon his arrival, he describes the education sector as a “national disaster”, and launches vigorous measures: fight against “the purchase of exams”, an end to “fraudulent registrations”, construction of universities, and closure of 150 establishments “unsuitable” schools, including 90 in Libreville. This measure is generally welcomed, but the method goes badly, and while around 8,000 students out of 200,000 children in school in the country remain on the floor at the start of the school year, he is faced with a two-month strike by teachers, very followed in the primary. Under pressure from teachers’ unions in particular, who accused Mr. Ondo Ossa’s attitude of “contempt”, Omar Bongo ended up suspending the closure of schools. “He was alone against everyone, but supported by the President, and he seemed to get used to it”, justifies Mr. Mba Allogo, praising the consistency of the candidate who “never had his card to the CEO”.
In 2009, he left “without scandal or compromise” with power, remembers Ernest Nkili. He “did not have an open conflicting relationship” with Ali Bongo, then Minister of Defense (1999-2009), but a “different outlook”, which led to his presidential candidacy the same year. After having fully returned to university life, he was the victim of a mysterious knife attack in 2014 in Libreville. The government was moved by it but, nine years later, there have been neither “trials” nor “arrests”, regrets Mr. Nkili. Asked, the Libreville prosecutor’s office did not respond to AFP’s requests.
Although the appointment of Mr. Ondo Ossa instilled doubt among the activists of the Alternance 2023 parties, as he seemed less well placed than other favourites, the alliance was not weakened for all that, and their main leaders Alexandre Barro Chambrier and Paulette Missambo, take a welded block around him. “When you become a minister, you have a suit, a tie, you have a big car, people don’t come into your house anymore. He always kept his gate open. I don’t know what he would do as president, but minister he was never anyone other than Albert Ondo Ossa for his neighbors,” concludes Mr. Mba Allogo.
