Gabon’s polls on shaky ground
SWITCH: PRESIDENT BONGO MAY LOSE OUT TO RIVAL PING DUE TO ‘GROWING DISCONTENT’ Citizens could express slumping economy frustration at ballot box.
The increasingly disgruntled people of Gabon go to the polls tomorrow for a presidential election, in which a last-minute opposition pact has robbed incumbent Ali Bongo of a clear run at a second term.
Bongo, 57, has long sought to emerge from the shadow of his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled the country of 1.8 million people for 41 years until he died in 2009.
The president’s only credible challenger, former senior African Union official Jean Ping, 73, is carrying the flag for the old guard of Bongo senior’s cronies.
It was only last week that protracted negotiations finally led the last of other prominent opposition hopefuls to give way to Ping.
Until then, their presidential ambitions would most likely have ensured Bongo won another seven years in office.
Nine other runners have a negligible chance of winning the election, to be decided by a majority after a single round of voting.
Fears that the results will deliver unrest are fuelled by memories of the violence that followed Bongo’s 2009 victory against Andre Mba Obame.
Several people were killed, buildings looted, a ceasefire imposed and the French consulate in the economic capital Port-Gentil torched.
There has been growing discontent and public sector strikes in recent months.
The country’s economic woes are tied to the fall in the global price of oil, the mainstay of Gabon’s undiversified economy.
Thousands of oil workers have lost their jobs, according to the sector’s main union, Onep.
“If these people and their families express their frustration at the ballot box, well, that could end badly for the government’s candidate,” said Onep’s deputy head, Sylvain Mayabi-Binet.
Bongo has campaigned under the slogan “Let’s change together”, playing up the roads and hospitals built during his first term and stressing the need to break with the bad old days of disappearing public funds and dodgy management of oil revenues.
Ping has pledged to ensure, if elected, that Gabon would be “sheltered from need and fear”.
About 628 000 voters will be eligible to cast their ballots tomorrow. – AFP