General Brice Oligui Nguema, who overthrew Ali Bongo five days ago in Gabon, was sworn in on Monday as president of a “transition” whose duration he did not set but with the repeated promise to “return power to civilians” through “credible elections”.

Soldiers had proclaimed on August 30 the “end of the regime” of Ali Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled Gabon for 14 years, less than an hour after the proclamation of his re-election in the contested ballot of August 26.

The next day, the heads of the army and police corps, meeting in a Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI) headed by General Oligui, had accused the entourage of the Head of State in house arrest – including his wife and one of his sons – of “massive embezzlement” of public money and “irresponsible governance”.

For more than 55 years, the Bongo family ruled without sharing this small Central African state, among the richest on the continent thanks to its oil, but under the yoke of an elite accused by its opponents of “massive corruption” and “bad governance”.

“I swear before God and the Gabonese people to faithfully preserve the republican regime”, “to preserve the achievements of democracy”, declared to the Presidency before judges of the Constitutional Court, the brigadier general, in costume of red uniform of the Republican Guard (GR). It is the elite unit of the army, which he has commanded since 2020, and the praetorian guard of the Bongo regime for decades.

In front of hundreds of guests including deposed ministers of Ali Bongo and caciques of his party, but also tenors of the opposition, the general urged them to participate in the drafting of a future Constitution which will be “adopted by referendum”, new electoral and penal codes “more democratic and respectful of human rights”. He also “undertook” to “hand over power to civilians by organizing free, transparent and credible elections”.

He also announced the appointment “in a few days” of a transitional government made up of “experienced” and “seasoned” people from whom he is asking for the release of “prisoners of conscience” and the return of “political exiles”.

Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, under house arrest since the putsch, was elected in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, in power for more than 41 years.

The “patriarch” was also one of the pillars of “Françafrique”, a system of political cooptation, commercial preserves and corruption between France and some of its former colonies on the continent.

At the exit of the Presidential Palace, caciques of the power of Ali Bongo were booed or greeted by a bronca.

“We feel freedom, joy, above all hope for a better future,” exclaimed Lucrèce Mengué, 28, among the thousands of people gathered in front of the Palace.

Since its coup, the army, thanked by the majority of Gabonese for having “liberated them from the Bongo clan”, refuses to speak of a coup, preferring to evoke a “patriotic act” having avoided a “bloodbath”. . No deaths or injuries were reported.

General Oligui said on Monday his “great astonishment when we hear certain international institutions condemn the act of soldiers who have only respected their oath under the flag: to save the fatherland at the risk of their lives”.

According to him, the army had “a double choice: either to kill Gabonese who had legitimately demonstrated, or to put an end to a manifestly loaded electoral process (…), we said no, never again in our beautiful country, The gabon”.

The African Union, the European Union, the UN and many Western capitals have condemned the coup but also insisted on a “difference” with putsches on the continent (eight in three years) because preceded by ” an institutional coup”, according to the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.

The new strongman of Libreville, who met all the components of society for 5 days, pledged to fight against corruption and bad governance, to restore the economy, and to redistribute wealth to the poorest.

Since the coup, public television has broadcast images of one of the sons of the deposed president, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, of the former First Lady, his mother Sylvia, “detained” arbitrarily and incommunicado in Gabon according to his lawyers, as well as relatives, former officials of the presidency or of Ms. Bongo’s cabinet shown in front of bundles of banknotes.

This “young guard” is detained for “high treason”, “massive embezzlement of public funds” and “falsification of the signature” of the head of state, according to the putschists who accuse members of Mr. Bongo’s family of the having “manipulated” by taking advantage of the aftermath of a stroke that occurred in 2018.

“We study but we can’t find a job, I’ve been unemployed for 5 years, we’re told that the funds are empty and we end up finding all this money at home,” says Anouchka Minang, 31, midwife, after the investiture of General Oligui.

04/09/2023 16:29:05 – Libreville (AFP) – © 2023 AFP