Gabon:President Ali Bongo to seek third term in August elections

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who has been in power for almost 14 years, said on Sunday (9 July) that he would seek a third term in the elections scheduled for 26 August.
“I officially announce today that I am a candidate,” Ondimba told a crowd of supporters in a speech broadcast live on his Facebook page. In 2009, the 64-year-old Bongo took over from his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled the oil-rich African nation for 41 years. The president was narrowly re-elected in 2016, with just 5,500 more votes than rival Jean Ping who claimed the election had been fixed.

After suffering a stroke in 2018 and spending months out of the public’s sight recovering, the opposition questioned his fitness to run the nation.

The Bongo family that has ruled the country for more than half a century already is branded a “dynastic power” by the opposition. For the time being, Bongo is the clear favorite for the presidential election, as various opposition parties have failed to form a single coalition. The announcement of Ondimba’s presidential candidacy comes just a day after a new report titled “105 promises, 13 achievements” slammed the record of his second 7-year term. In the 196-page-long document, economists Mays Mouissi and Harold Leckat highlight, among other things, the rising unemployment rate, failed promises of infrastructure development, and a third of Gabonese people still living below the poverty line — and all of that in one of Africa’s richest countries, full of abundant natural resources.