2023-09-04 05:44:00
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”.
Since the putsch on Wednesday, he appears every day surrounded by generals and colonels commanding the corps of the army, the gendarmerie and the police. Apart from a fringe of the former opposition, which urges him to hand over power to him, the majority of the population seems to display, in small daily demonstrations, their gratitude towards an army which “liberated them from the Bongo clan”.
The Bongo family had ruled this small Central African state for more than 55 years, among the richest on the continent thanks to its oil, but whose wealth was monopolized by an elite in and around this family that the opposition, and the putschists since Wednesday, accuse 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.
Praetorian Guard
Wednesday at dawn, less than an hour after the proclamation of the results of the presidential election of August 26, and the re-election announced at nearly 65% of Mr. Bongo, soldiers proclaimed “the end of the regime”, the accusing him of having rigged the ballot.
A putsch “without bloodshed”, assures General Oligui. No deaths or injuries have been reported to date.
The next day, the military proclaimed head of a Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI) Brice Oligui Nguema, a 48-year-old general yet until then at the head of the formidable Republican Guard (GR), praetorian guard father and son Bongos for decades.
The African Union, the European Union, the UN and a large part of Western capitals condemned the coup, but generally insisted on a “difference” with the putsches in other countries of the continent (eight in three years) because it was preceded, according to them, by a manifestly fraudulent election. “An institutional coup”, even underlined the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Since then, General Oligui has chained, at a frantic pace, hours of highly publicized discussions with all of the “living forces of the Nation”: the clergy, business leaders, trade unions, civil society, many political parties and former ministers, NGOs, diplomats, donors, journalists… He conscientiously took notes and answered questions and complaints at length.
Corruption
The new strongman of Libreville insists that he has made the fight against corruption and bad governance his main battle horse with the “recovery of the economy” and the redistribution of the country’s income and wealth to the people.
He promised Friday to organize, without specifying when, “free, transparent, credible and peaceful elections”. But this only after having adopted, “by referendum”, a new Constitution for “more democratic institutions” and “respectful of human rights”. “Without haste,” he said.
The junta had not yet lifted the curfew decreed by the former power on the evening of the presidential election on Sunday. However, life resumed its course the day after the putsch.
Since the coup, public television has broadcast images of one of the sons of the deposed president, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, and other young men close to him or the former First Lady, his wife. mother Sylvia Bongo, who is “detained” arbitrarily and incommunicado in Gabon, according to her lawyers.
They are all former senior presidential officials, shown in front of trunks, boxes and bags overflowing with wads of banknotes seized from their homes, according to the new authorities.
These so-called members of the “young guard” surrounding Mr. Bongo are detained in particular for “high treason”, “massive embezzlement of public funds” and “falsification of the signature” of the Head of State, according to the putschists who accuse, in echo the opposition for years, members of the close family of Mr. Bongo to have “manipulated” by taking advantage of the aftermath of a serious stroke that occurred in 2018.
04/09/2023 05:00:55 – Libreville (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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