Gabon’s president Bongo to compete against 18 rivals in re-election bid

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has ruled the oil-rich West African state for 55 years and is now favorite for a third term, will face 18 other candidates in next month’s poll, authorities announced Monday (24 July).
The 64-year-old, who took over from his father Omar Bongo Ondimba in 2009, officially announced in July that he would run again for president. His leading rivals for the top job include Alexandre Barro Chambrier of the opposition Rally for the Fatherland and Modernity (RPM) party and Paulette Missambo, head of the National Union. The opposition failed to agree on the nomination of a single candidate to challenge Bongo in the 26 August poll, which will coincide with elections for the National Assembly and regional and local councils, but both candidates are former ministers and part of the Alternance 2023 coalition.
Bongo’s powerful Gabonese Democratic Party holds strong majorities in both houses of parliament. In 2016, the president was narrowly re-elected, with just 5,500 more votes than rival Jean Ping who claimed the election had been fixed. In April, the Gabonese parliament voted to amend the constitution and reduce the president’s term from seven to five years. Sections of the opposition criticized the changes, in particular the end of two rounds of voting, as a means of “facilitating the re-election” of Bongo. Though being one of Africa’s richest countries in terms of per capita GDP due largely to its oil revenue and relatively small population of 2.3 million, about a third of Gabon’s population live below the poverty threshold, according to the World Bank.