Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Libreville (Agenzia Fides) – There are still no official results from the presidential elections that were held yesterday, August 30, in Gabon, however each of the three candidates claims to have won the race.
Andre Mba Obame, former Internal Affairs Minister, claims to have won in four of Gabon's nine provinces, which represent 62% of the electoral vote. Prior to his claim, the historic opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou, along with Ali Bongo (the oldest son of the deceased President Omar Bongo), also claimed victory. The presidential elections were announced shortly after the death of Omar Bongo, June 8 (see Fides 10/6/2009), the “leader” of the African presidents, who had been in power since 1967.
His son, Ali Bongo, former Defense Minister, was nominated by what was then the only party, the Democratic Gabonese Party (PDG), after an internal struggle in the former President's party. Bongo's long reign had created a system of governing, in which public interests were often mixed with private interests of the President and his inner circle of family members and closest collaborators.
For this reason, the people of Gabon voted with a mixed sentiment of hope for change and resignation before the reality that such a system, marked by years of power, would not easily be dismantled in a few months.
The eve of the vote was marked by disputes over the formation of voting lists that included a total of over 800,000 voters. A number that the opposition party says was exaggerated. They claim that in a country of 1.5 million people, many of whom are very young, the number of voters must be somewhere between 500,000-700,000. The opposition has, therefore, voiced their fear of vote-rigging through the manipulation of voting registration.
Bongo also controls the bureaucratic structure and has substantial economic means at his disposal in the campaign, while the opposition has been divided and broken into factions. At the beginning of the campaign, 23 candidates entered the race. Eleven of these renounced their candidacy to support Andre Mba Obama. They are the first in the series of candidates that are linked to the “Bongo system” as former ministers and heads of State. The only candidate who can truly claim opposition to the old regime is Pierre Mamboundou, a long-time critic of Bongo.
Gabon is the fourth largest African oil producer and the world's third largest producer of manganese, yet it is also one of the countries at the bottom of the list in terms of human development (it ranks 124 out of 177). The oil profits have not resulted in an improvement in economic or social development. Gabon is in need of streets, bridges, schools, and hospitals. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 31/8/2009)
