At 64, of which 14 passed to the head of Gabon, Ali Bongo has therefore decided to re-enlist. “I officially announce today that I am a candidate,” the Gabonese president announced on Sunday, July 9, in front of a few hundred supporters who chanted “Ali president!” in a speech broadcast live on Twitter, in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Nkok, near the capital Libreville.
Since then, the reactions have drawn the contours of an even more divided Gabon. On the one hand, supporters generally relieved to see the Head of State defending the colors of the all-powerful Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), which largely dominates Parliament and is the big favorite in the legislative and municipal elections organized on the same day as the August 26 presidential election. On the other, an opposition which denounces a candidacy in its eyes illegal. Between the two, public opinion is worried.
I officially announce today, here, that I am a CANDIDATE! I know that together, all together, united, by the will of God, we will win! pic.twitter.com/EJ6TIXEHiO
Elected for the first time in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba – who had ruled the country for more than 41 years – Ali Bongo was narrowly re-elected in 2016. His candidacy will have to be ratified by an investiture Congress of the PDG, scheduled for Monday, July 10. The formal investiture of the Head of State by the CEO appears to be a formality, the party has been begging him for more than a year to run for a third term. And this despite the fragile health of the Head of State. He had disappeared 10 long months abroad after a stroke in 2018 in Saudi Arabia, a convalescence and intense rehabilitation which seems to have made him a miracle, but has made his power waver. His opponents have questioned and still question his mental and physical abilities to lead the country, some even claiming that a look-alike is replacing him…
His recovery had been punctuated by a failed putsch, as pitiful as it was mysterious, by a handful of soldiers on January 7, 2019, and a creeping attempt to be scrapped by his omnipotent chief of staff, Brice Laccruche Alihanga. Ali Bongo left him the keys to Gabon with blind trust, like many others before him. Brice Laccruche has been in prison for more than three years, along with several loyal ministers and senior officials, all targeted by a ruthless “anti-corruption” operation.
The president has since displayed himself as a “father of rigor” for ministers and advisers whom he demands that they “put themselves to work in the service of the populations”, submits to audits and turns away at the slightest suspicion, in this Gabon afflicted by endemic corruption since the decried decades of “Françafrique”, of which Omar Bongo was the emblematic pillar.
The closing of official applications is scheduled for Tuesday. The official electoral campaign will run from August 11 to 25 at midnight, but most candidates have been carrying it out for a year across the country, Ali Bongo having multiplied there in recent months an intense “republican tour” by distributing promises. He regularly presents himself there as a world champion of the environment, at the head of a Gabon covered with 88% of forest, “a net absorber of carbon and a leader in net zero emissions initiatives”, according to the World Bank. .
A “pre-campaign” carried out with the means of the State, denounces the opposition, which is advancing for the time being in very dispersed order, with around twenty personalities having already announced their intention to run for president. If they do not unite behind a common candidate in the next seven weeks before the election, they will have little chance of competing with the incumbent in a single-round ballot, who will therefore decide the winner by relative majority in this a small state in central Africa, particularly rich in oil.
Vain words and postures, umpteenth promises never kept, strangles the opposition, for whom the gap is widening between the rich and the poor in one of the richest countries in Africa in terms of GDP per capita, but which is still struggling to diversify an economy. too dependent on oil and keeps one inhabitant in three below the poverty line according to the World Bank. If the Head of State is regularly criticized for letting advisers and ministers run the country’s affairs, and sometimes confuse them with their own affairs, economists and researchers have recently published a meticulous survey starting from 2016 to 2023, on the true assessment of Ali Bongo’s presidency. And according to this report presented by the economist Mays Mouissi, of the 105 promises made by President Bongo, only 13 have been kept, 59 have not been fulfilled, the others have only been partially fulfilled.
But, recently, Ali Bongo has also metamorphosed into a formidable political strategist, like his father: he multiplies the disgraces in his camp and poachs, with ministerial portfolios or high-sounding titles, in a disunited opposition. The contrast is striking: in 2009, Ali Bongo had been painstakingly dubbed by the CEO of Omar, and deaf internal struggles had persisted and almost cost him dearly in 2016; today, he has profoundly overhauled the party, with the promotion of a faithful young guard in particular.
For his supporters, Ali Bongo is a Phoenix courageously rising from his ashes, at the cost of painful rehabilitation sessions. For his critics, he is pushed, even “manipulated”, by an immediate entourage who does not want to let go of power and its achievements after nearly 55 years of “Bongo dynasty”.
The path was not marked out. Jet-setter passionate about music, he imagined a career, recording in 1978 a “soul, disco, funk” 45-rpm. Then Alain-Bernard Bongo became Ali Bongo when his father converted the family to Islam in 1973. In 1989, Omar Bongo offered him a luxury morocco at the age of 29, Foreign Affairs, then ten years later the strategic portfolio of the Defense, which he will occupy until 2009. Barely elected, Ali Bongo ostensibly distances himself from France, in particular to break with the policy of proximity of the father. To the point of deserting the luxurious family homes which earned nine other children of Omar an indictment in Paris, in particular for concealment of embezzlement of public funds, in the so-called “ill-gotten gains” affair.