The President of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, in power for nearly fourteen years, announced on Sunday July 9 that he will be a candidate for a third presidential term on August 26. He is currently the favorite against a very divided opposition. “I am officially announcing today that I am a candidate”, he launched in front of a few hundred supporters who chanted “Ali President! “, in a speech broadcast live on Twitter, in the special economic zone of Nkok, near the capital, Libreville.
The 64-year-old head of state was first elected in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled the country for more than 41 years, then narrowly re-elected in 2016.
His candidacy will have to be endorsed by an investiture Congress scheduled for Monday of his all-powerful Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), which largely dominates Parliament and is also a big favorite in the legislative and municipal elections which will take place the same day as the presidential election on August 26. The formal inauguration of Mr Bongo by the CEO on Monday will be a formality, with the party begging him for more than a year to run for a third term. The closing date for official nominations is Tuesday.
A “pre-campaign” carried out with state resources, denounces the opposition
The opposition is advancing, for the time being, in very dispersed order, with around twenty personalities having already announced their intention to stand against Mr. Bongo. 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 small state in Central Africa rich, especially in oil.
The official electoral campaign will run from August 11 to 25 at midnight, but most candidates have been leading it for a year across the country, with Mr. Bongo multiplying there in recent months an intense “republican tour” by distributing promises. A “pre-campaign” carried out with the means of the State, denounces the opposition.
In 2016, Mr. Bongo was narrowly re-elected, with 5,500 votes ahead of Jean Ping, who denounced a “rigged election”. Violence in the capital, Libreville, had killed at least five people, according to the government, but around thirty people, shot dead by the police, according to the opposition.
A stroke in October 2018 had left Mr. Bongo, for many months, away from the political scene, and part of the opposition continues, four and a half years later, to question his physical and mental capacities to lead the country. . The majority denounces campaigns centered essentially on the health of the Head of State, “without any other program”.
Ali Bongo, who still suffers from stiffness in one leg and one arm, moves with difficulty but has multiplied, in recent months, at a steady pace, meetings throughout the country and visits abroad. The opposition denounces a “dynastic power” after fifty-five years of reign of the Bongo family.
In February, a consultation forum, shunned by the main opposition leaders, had made it possible to modify the Constitution, reducing the presidential term from seven to five years and returning the ballot to a single round. His detractors had denounced a maneuver intended, five months before the elections, to facilitate the re-election of Ali Bongo by a relative majority.
Opposition divided
Among his fiercest opponents, Alexandre Barro Chambrier, of the Rassemblement pour la Patrie et la Modernité (RPM), former minister of Bongo father and son, was invested Sunday as his party’s candidate. Another major opposition figure, Paulette Missambo, of the National Union (UN), former minister of Omar Bongo, announced in May her candidacy within a coalition, Alternance 2023, like other tenors of the opposition who are part of it. Including Mr. Barro Chambrier.
Gabon is one of Africa’s richest countries in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, thanks to its oil, timber and manganese in particular, and a small population of some 2.3 million. souls. It is among the leading producers of black gold in sub-Saharan Africa, and this resource represents 38.5% of its GDP and 70.5% of its export revenues.
But the economy, which the government is unable to diversify sufficiently despite significant progress in recent years to develop local production sectors, still depends too heavily on hydrocarbons, and poverty remains very present.
“Despite its economic potential, the country struggles to translate its wealth of resources into sustainable and inclusive growth” and still a third (32.9%) of its inhabitants live below the poverty line, wrote the World Bank in April 2023 .