2023-09-04 13:14:02
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, promising to install “more democratic institutions before “free elections”. Putschist soldiers had announced 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 August 26 election, considering that she had been faked.
The next day, they proclaimed General Oligui, 48, president of a Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI). “I swear before God and the Gabonese people to faithfully preserve the republican regime”, “to preserve the achievements of democracy”, declared before the judges of the Constitutional Court the brigadier general in the red ceremonial costume of the Republican Guard (GR), the elite army unit he commanded.
Ali Bongo still under house arrest
General Oligui also promised “free” and “transparent” elections at the end of the transition period and pledged to grant amnesty to “prisoners of conscience”. The Bongo family had ruled without sharing for more than 55 years this small Central African state, among the richest on the continent thanks to its oil but whose wealth was monopolized by an elite accused of “massive” “corruption” and “bad governance “.
Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, under house arrest since the putsch, was elected in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had already ruled the country 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.
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