The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council announced Thursday, August 31, the immediate suspension of “Gabon’s participation in all activities of the AU, its organs and institutions”. The continental organization “strongly condemns the takeover by the military in the Republic of Gabon,” the AU said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter).
The meeting was chaired by the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Nigerian Bankole Adeoye, and the current holder of the rotating chairmanship of the council, Burundian Willy Nyamitwe. On Wednesday, the chairperson of the African Union commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, had “strongly” condemned what he described as “the attempted coup” in Gabon, and called on the army and forces Gabonese security forces “to guarantee the physical integrity” of Ali Bongo Ondimba.
Earlier in the day, the main opposition platform in Gabon called on the military who overthrew President Ali Bongo Ondimba to complete the counting of the ballots to recognize the “victory” of its candidate. Platform Alternance 2023 also “invited the defense and security forces to the discussion in order to assess, in a patriotic and responsible framework, the situation and to find, among Gabonese, the best solution” to “allow the country to grow out of this situation.”
“Present in front of each polling station and having watched over the transport of the ballot boxes, the security and defense forces are the first witnesses of the large victory of Professor Albert Ondo Ossa”, assured the press Mike Jocktane, spokesperson for Alternation 2023 platform. According to the results officially announced an hour before the coup – and which the putschists considered rigged -, Mr. Ondo Ossa had won 30.77% of the vote, against 64.27% for Ali Bongo , in power for fourteen years.
After warmly thanking, on behalf of the “grateful homeland”, the army for “standing up against an electoral coup” and thus “sparing” Gabon from the loss of “human lives”, Mr. Jocktane invited her to “supervise” the “resumption of the process of centralization of the results” of the presidential election on Saturday, which “will see the victory of Mr. Ondo Ossa at the ballot box formalized”.
“You have to put things in context. First of all, it’s not a coup d’etat, it’s a palace revolution. [Mr.] Oligui Nguema is the cousin of Ali Bongo (…). The Bongos found it necessary to put Ali Bongo aside to effectively continue the Bongo system,” said Albert Ondo Ossa on TV5 Monde. “Oligui Nguema is an underling. Behind him, the Bongo clan is holding on to power,” he said.
“I ask the military to return to the Republican order. It will be heard or not but I observe them (…). Gabon is flush with the daisies. It must be straightened out, and it is not the military who will be able to straighten it out,” he added, calling on the international community to react. He addressed himself in particular to France, “which cannot be second-guessed. As soon as we condemn the coup, we must condemn what follows, namely effectively the transition,” he argued.
The opponent claimed to have been in Paris and to have “warned everything that was going to happen (…). I said we were going to have an electoral coup. The Bongos have never won any elections, therefore they have only carried out coups to stay in power.
On Wednesday, upon taking power, the military “cancelled” the elections and dissolved all institutions. Thursday, the spokesperson for the country’s new strongman announced that he, General Brice Oligui Nguema, will be sworn in as “transitional president (…) before the Constitutional Court on Monday, September 4, 2023 as president of the Republic “.
General Oligui also “decided (…) on the gradual establishment of transitional institutions”, the duration of which was not specified, and “instructed all secretaries general, ministerial cabinets, directors general and all heads of state services to immediately ensure the effective resumption of work and the continuity of the operation of all public services,” according to the spokesperson.
The transitional president “wants to reassure all donors, development partners and creditors of the State that all measures will be taken to guarantee the respect of our country’s commitments both externally interior,” Colonel Manfoumbi Manfoumbi concluded.
“Many countries face profound governance challenges. But military governments are not the solution,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Thursday in response to “the succession of coups in recent months, particularly in Africa ” .
Military governments “make the problems worse. They cannot solve a crisis, they can only make it worse,” he added. “I call on all countries to quickly establish credible democratic institutions and the rule of law. »
