In Gabon, soldiers seize power and proclaim the cancellation of the elections

2023-08-30 10:28:51
Screen capture from video broadcast on the Gabon 24 channel which shows Gabonese soldiers announcing on television on August 30 that they were “putting an end to the current regime” and the cancellation of an election which, according to the results officials, was won by President Ali Bongo Ondimba. – /AFP

It only took a few minutes after the announcement of the official results, unsurprisingly confirming Ali Bongo’s re-election to a third term, for a dozen soldiers to appear on television on the night of Tuesday 29 to Wednesday 30 August, and proclaim the dissolution of “all the institutions of the Republic” and the “end of regime”. Gathered within a Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI), these soldiers, from different corps of the Gabonese army, justified their coup on the Gabon 24 channel, housed within the presidency. , because of “the serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis” their country is going through.

In their press release, read by one of their own, these soldiers and police consider that “the organization of the electoral deadlines [tenues le 26 août] did not meet the conditions for a transparent, credible and inclusive ballot so hoped for by Gabonese people. Added to this is an irresponsible, unpredictable governance, which results in a continuous deterioration of social cohesion, risking to lead the country into chaos..

While automatic weapon fire was heard in several districts of Libreville, the capital, at the time of their declaration, these soldiers, among whom were in particular members of the Republican Guard, the praetorian guard of power, also announced border closures. While it is still too early to know what the outcome of this coup attempt will be, it came in the wake of the publication of the official results of the presidential election on Saturday. According to figures communicated in the middle of the night from Tuesday to Wednesday by the president of the Gabonese Election Center (CGE), Michel Stéphane Bonda, the outgoing president, Ali Bongo Odimba, obtained 64.27% of the vote, when his main rival , Albert Ondo Ossa, won only 30.77% of the vote.

“Nothing to say as it stands”

“They overturned the results which according to the first trends gave us more than 70% of the vote, so part of the army took responsibility. President-elect Ondo Ossa is calm and will react later”explained, Wednesday morning, Mike Jocktane, his campaign manager, without condemning or approving the entry into the scene of the military.

One of the senior executives of the Bongo regime, joined by The worldensured, for his part, that he could not “nothing to say as it stands” and not having any information on the fate of the Head of State, Ali Bongo Ondimba. The latter, re-elected in 2016 in protest and violence, had already been the victim of an attempted coup in January 2019, barely two months after a stroke which considerably weakened him, but this had quickly turned short.

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