Gabon waits anxiously for disputed and delayed election results

LIBREVILLE: Gabon was braced today for an election result that looked likely to be hotly disputed between bitter rivals President Ali Bongo and his main challenger Jean Ping.

The electoral commission was scheduled to release the results last night but by 5.30 this morning, the panel was still in a closed-door meeting.

Gabonese have become increasingly nervous about the delay in delivering the results, as well as claims by Ping to have won by 60 percent.

State TV repeatedly played com- ments from the government warning Ping’s supporters that announcing results before the electoral commission was illegal, interspersed with music and a documentary about Nelson Mandela played on a loop.

The government accused Ping yesterday of trying to destabilise Gabon.

“After the results, we will hand over these instances to the Gabonese judicial authorities,” the government warned.

It denounced “foreign interference” after the French socialist party and two French lawyers publicly said Ping had won.

With both sides trading accusations, many fear an intractable political crisis.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon yesterday expressed concern about the issue of premature results and asked Ping and Bongo to urge restraint on their supporters.

“Jean Ping’s victory is no longer in doubt,” a statement signed by Ping said late yesterday, estimating his win at about 60 percent.

A win by Ping, a former foreign minister, AU Commission chairman and long-time political insider, would end half a century of rule by the Bongo family.

Bongo was elected in 2009 after the death of his father, Omar Bongo, who ran Gabon for 42 years.

Authorities have also reacted angrily to an app set up by a political adviser to Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara that allegedly gives live results by region, which they said were hacked and falsified.

Ouattara’s office responded by sacking the accused individual, Mamadi Diane.

Gabon’s first-past-the-post system means the winner only needs more votes than any other candidate. Bongo, 57, also benefits from being the incumbent in a country with a patronage system lubricated by oil largesse.

The EU’s observer mission on Monday criticised a “lack of transparency” among the institutions running the polls and said Bongo had benefited from preferential access to money and the media. Government spokesman Alain-Claude Nze accused the EU of overstepping its mandate.

Gabon’s economic troubles, caused by falling oil output and prices, have fuelled opposition charges that its 1.8 million people have struggled under Bongo’s leadership. – Reuters