2023-12-15 23:55:00
The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) announced on Friday that it was maintaining the suspension of Gabon, a sanction imposed following the overthrow of President Ali Bongo Ondimba by the military last August.
ECCAS, which recognized the “peaceful and inclusive character” of the Gabonese transition, “decided to maintain the decision to suspend Gabon’s participation in the activities of the Community until the return to constitutional order”, he said. -she said in a press release, following a summit in Djibloho, Equatorial Guinea.
Were represented at the summit: Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Chad, Cameroon and Rwanda. The ECCAS also includes, in addition to Gabon currently suspended, the DRC.
The lifting of this sanction would have represented a first step towards reintegration on the international scene, almost four months after the coup led to the condemnation of Western capitals and the suspension of Gabon from the African Union.
Popular among the vast majority of Gabonese people for having put an end to 55 years of the “Bongo dynasty”, the leader of the putschists of last August 30, General Brice Oligui Nguema, was proclaimed transitional president by the army.
He then immediately promised to return power to civilians at the end of a transition. If the timetable is respected, it will last two years and elections will take place in August 2025.
General Oligui has, since the first days of his assumption of power, met all the leaders of the ECCAS member countries, with the exception of the Angolan president, João Lourenço.
Some leaders of Central Africa, a region which has the longest-serving heads of state in the world, do not necessarily look favorably on a rapid rehabilitation of a country where the head of the Praetorian Guard, supposedly to be the guarantee of their retention in power, overthrew one of their peers.
The Equatorial Guinean Teodoro Obiang holds the absolute record outside monarchies with 44 years, the Cameroonian Paul Biya is right behind him with more than 41 years, followed by the Congolese Denis Sassou Nguesso with 26 years and the Rwandan Paul Kagame with 23 years in power. In Chad, the young general Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno succeeded his father who had presided over the country for more than 30 years three years ago.
– “Irresponsible governance” –
On the night of August 30, when he had just been proclaimed winner of the presidential election, Ali Bongo Ondimba was overthrown by almost all the general officers of the army and police gathered around General Brice Oligui Nguema .
All political parties, including that of Mr. Bongo, as well as the vast majority of civil society organizations, immediately rallied to the power of General Nguema and praised not a “coup d’état” but a “coup de liberation”, according to the term dear to the putschists.
Mr. Bongo was elected 14 years ago, after the death in 2009 of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled this small oil-rich Central African country for more than 41 years.
To remove Ali Bongo, the putschist soldiers cited grossly rigged elections, “irresponsible governance” and power corrupted by the family entourage and close collaborators of the head of state.
The latter, assure the putschists, no longer really led the country and was “manipulated”, since a stroke in 2018, in particular by his wife and one of his sons.
The Franco-Gabonese wife of the deposed president Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, as well as their son Noureddin Bongo Valentin, were arrested and charged, like other relatives and former members of the Bongo spouses’ cabinets, in particular with various counts of corruption and misappropriation of public funds, as well as forgery of the signature of the head of state.
Ali Bongo, after having been briefly placed under house arrest at the time of the putsch, is “free to move” and free to go abroad, the military announced a few days later. But recently, members of his family accused General Oligui of preventing him from going out or receiving visits from his relatives.
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