After President Ali Bongo was elected to a third term in office in Gabon, army officers emerged on national television to claim they had taken control of the country.
The officials reportedly declared that they were nullifying the election results from Saturday because they had been deemed “fraudulent” by the opposition.According to reports, twelve soldiers appeared on television to declare that they would dissolve “all the institutions of the republic” and annul the election results.
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One of the troops was quoted on the television network Gabon 24 as saying, “We have decided to defend peace by overthrowing the current regime.”
The soldier blamed “irresponsible, unpredictable governance resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion that risks leading the country into chaos” as the cause of the problem.
With 64.27% of the vote cast, the Gabonese Election Centre (CGE) pronounced Bongo the winner of the election on Wednesday.
Albert Ossa, Bongo’s major opponent, came in second with 30.77% of the vote, according to CGE director Michel Bonda.
Ossa’s charges of electoral fraud and anomalies have been denied by Bongo’s staff.Since the presidential and parliamentary elections, tensions in Gabon have been high and there are fears of upheaval.The 53-year rule of his family would come to an end with Bongo’s coup. When his father Omar passed away in 2009, he was elected president.In 2018, Bongo had a stroke that left him unable to function for about a year, prompting demands that he resign down.
An effort was made to overthrow Bongo in 2019. Soldiers responsible for the failed coup were imprisoned.
Gabon
Officially known as the Gabonese Republic (French: République gabonaise), Gabon (/bn/ g-BON; French pronunciation: [ab]; Sangu: Ngabu) is a nation on the west coast of Central Africa. Its equator-located borders with Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, and the Gulf of Guinea are to the northwest, north, east, and south, respectively. Its area is just about 270,000 square kilometers (100,000 sq mi), and there are an estimated 2.3 million people living there. East of the savanna are coastal plains, followed by mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the center). Libreville is both the country’s capital and largest city.
The pigmy peoples are the original inhabitants of Gabon. Bantu immigrants started to settle in the region starting in the 14th century. The independent nation of Gabon has had three presidents since gaining its independence from France in August 1960. It established a multi-party system and a democratic constitution in the 1990s with the goal of improving electoral transparency and reforming some governmental institutions. The Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) however continues to hold the majority of seats.
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French is the official language. About 95% of the population is of Bantu ethnicity, and about 75% of them practice Christianity, the most popular religion in the nation. With oil and foreign private investment, it has the fifth-highest GDP per capita (PPP) in all of Africa, behind Seychelles, Mauritius, Equatorial Guinea, and Botswana, and the fourth-highest HDI[6] in the area, behind South Africa, Seychelles, and Mauritius. Its GDP increased by more than 6% annually between 2010 and 2012.
Léon M’ba was chosen as the first president of Gabon in 1961, while Omar Bongo Ondimba served as his vice president. After M’ba came to power, there was a suppression of the press, a ban on political protests, restrictions on free speech, the eventual exclusion of other political parties from power, and a reform to the Constitution along French lines that gave the Presidency—a position M’ba himself assumed—exclusive authority. An army coup attempted to overthrow M’ba in January 1964 after he dissolved parliament to impose one-party control and restore parliamentary democracy. Within 24 hours, French paratroopers arrived to reinstate M’ba as ruler. After several days of battle, the coup was put down, and the opposition was jailed amid rioting and protests.
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