Gabon: military coup, President Bongo under "house arrest"

August 30, 2023

Putschist soldiers announced on Wednesday that they had put an “end to the regime in place” in Gabon and placed under “house arrest” President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose re-election after 14 years in power had just been announced.

Until this coup, condemned by the African Union and France, this oil-rich Central African country had been ruled for more than 55 years by the Bongo family. The opposition regularly denounces the “Bongo dynasty” in a country where corruption is endemic.

In a video message posted on social media where he appears obviously worried, Ali Bongo, 64, calls in English all his “friends around the world to tell them to make noise” about “people who (l)’ stopped”.

But in Libreville or Port-Gentil, the economic capital, happy crowds celebrated “the liberation of Gabon”.

In the working-class Plein Ciel district of Libreville, an AFP staffer saw around 100 people on a bridge, on foot or in cars, shouting, “Bongo out!”. To the sound of horns, they greeted and applauded police in riot gear and face masks.

In Port-Gentil, the economic capital, on the Place du Château d’eau, a popular district and bastion of the opposition, hundreds of people honked their horns shouting “Gabon is liberated”. Some danced with uniformed police and military personnel, reported Ousmane Manga, an independent journalist contacted by telephone by AFP.

Ali Bongo “is retired, he enjoys all his rights. He is a normal Gabonese, like everyone else,” said the head of the presidential guard, who already appears as the new strongman, General Brice Oligui Nguema, to the French newspaper Le Monde.

Ali Bongo was elected in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, pillar of “Françafrique”, who had ruled the country for more than 41 years.

The deposed head of state was placed under “house arrest, surrounded by his family and his doctors”, assured the putschists, but one of his sons, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, was arrested in particular for “high treason “.

As well as six other young senior officials of the Presidency, including the director of cabinet of Mr. Bongo and his deputy, advisers to the presidency as well as the numbers one and two of the all-powerful Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG).

General Oligui was carried in triumph by hundreds of soldiers from the Republican Guard, the powerfully armed elite unit and praetorian guard of the Bongos for decades.

He let colonels from different army corps read the communiqués on television all day long, but the putschists should announce in the evening the measures and the duration of the “transition” in the name of which they took power, as well as the name of the person who will lead it.

International reactions to this new coup d’état in a French-speaking African country were quick: China called to “guarantee the security of Ali Bongo”, Washington said it was following the situation very closely, while France, a former colonial power, “condemned the military coup”.

Russia expressed “deep concern” and the African Union “strongly condemned the coup attempt” and called on the military to “guarantee the physical integrity” of the president, his family and his ministers .

Just after the proclamation in the middle of the night of Mr. Bongo’s victory in the presidential election on Saturday with 64.27% of the votes – his main rival Albert Ondo Ossa, collecting 30.77% of the votes and denouncing massive fraud – , a group of a dozen soldiers had appeared on the screens of the Gabon 24 television channel, housed within the presidency itself.

Gathered within the “Committee for the transition and the restoration of institutions (CTRI), they “decided to defend peace by putting an end to the regime in place”, announced a colonel.

“He did not have the right to serve a third term, the Constitution was flouted, the method of election itself was not good. So the army decided to turn the page, to take its responsibilities” , argued General Oligui Nguema to Le Monde.

The military decreed the dissolution of all the country’s institutions and ordered the closure of Gabon’s borders “until further notice”.

The seven men arrested by the putschists, including Bongo’s son, embody the “young guard”, a group of very close and influential advisers to the Head of State since Mr. Bongo’s return from a long convalescence following a stroke in 2018.

The opposition and civil society regularly accused the members of this “young guard” of having become the true leaders of the country because, according to them, Ali Bongo was very weakened by the after-effects of his stroke.

This coup intervened in the middle of a curfew and while the internet was cut, two measures decreed by the government on Saturday before the closing of the polling stations in order to ward off, according to him, possible “violence”.

Internet was restored shortly after 0700 GMT.

Ali Bongo was seeking a third term, reduced from 7 to 5 years, in Saturday’s elections which included three ballots, presidential, legislative and municipal.