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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 13 (IPS) – On 26 August, Gabon went via the motions of an election. Official outcomes had been introduced 4 days later, in the course of the evening, with the nation below curfew. Predictably, incumbent President Ali Bongo, in energy for the reason that demise of his father and predecessor in 2009, was handed a 3rd time period. Fraud allegations had been rife, as in earlier elections. However this time one thing unprecedented occurred: lower than an hour later the navy had taken over, and the Bongo household’s 56-year reign had ended.
In Gabon, individuals welcomed the navy with open arms, thanking them for liberating them from the authoritarian yoke they’d lived below, most for all their lives. However overturning an oppressive regime isn’t the identical as attaining democratic freedom. Research show that though democracies are sometimes established within the wake of coups, too usually it’s new authoritarian regimes that emerge, bringing even increased ranges of state-sanctioned violence and human rights abuses.
A predatory autocracy
Omar Bongo gained energy in 1967 and stored it for greater than 40 years. He solely began permitting multi-party competitors in 1991, after ensuring his paradoxically named Gabonese Democratic Occasion would retain its grip via a mixture of patronage and repression.
His son and successor retained the dynasty’s energy with elections stricken by irregularities in 2009 and 2016. In each situations it was broadly believed that Bongo wasn’t the actual winner. The structure was repeatedly amended to permit additional phrases and electoral guidelines and timetables had been systematically manipulated.
In 2016, blatant fraud sparked violent protests that had been much more violently repressed. In 2018, Bongo suffered a stroke that took him out of the general public eye for nearly a 12 months, fuelling considerations that he could be unfit to rule. However a 2019 tried navy coup failed and was followed by a media crackdown, arrests of opposition politicians and a hardening of the Penal Code to criminalise dissent.
Beneath the Bongos’ dynastic reign, corruption, nepotism and predatory elite behaviour had been rampant. A small nation of two.3 million, Gabon has huge oil reserves, accounting for round 60 per cent of its revenues. By way of per capita GDP, it’s certainly one of Africa’s richest international locations – however a third of its inhabitants is poor, a stark distinction with the incalculable ill-gotten wealth of the Bongo household and their internal circle.
Why now and what subsequent?
The coup was introduced as a response to an undoubtedly fraudulent election. Upon seizing energy, the self-appointed ‘Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Establishments’ announced the annulment of the vote and the dissolution of government, legislative, judicial and electoral establishments.
Bongo was positioned below home arrest alongside along with his eldest son and advisor earlier than being launched and allowed to depart the nation on medical grounds. A number of high officers have been arrested on costs of treason, corruption and varied illicit actions, and huge portions of money have been reportedly seized from their houses.
Coup chief Common Brice Oligui Nguema is now the pinnacle of the supposedly transitional junta in energy. He’s assured that the dissolution of establishments is just ‘non permanent’ and that these will likely be made ‘extra democratic’. There’ll be elections, he’s stated, however not too soon. First a brand new structure should be drafted, together with a brand new legal code and electoral laws.
However whereas celebrations broke out within the streets, the international condemnation was swift, beginning with United Nations Secretary-Common António Guterres. The African Union suspended Gabon till constitutional order is restored, as did the Financial Neighborhood of Central African States.
Condemnation got here from the European Union and several other of its member states, and the Commonwealth, which Gabon was allowed to join in June 2022 regardless of not complying with minimal democracy and human rights requirements. The president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, expressed concern in regards to the ‘autocratic contagion’ spreading throughout Africa. Tinubu is presently main efforts by the Financial Neighborhood of West African States to reverse the recent coup in Niger.
Some observers argue that this coup is completely different from others in Central and West Africa because it wasn’t primarily based on safety considerations however quite the absence of democracy, targeted on election fraud and the corruption and mismanagement that stopped establishments assembly individuals’s primary calls for. That is the place many in Gabonese civil society are taking, inserting them at odds with the worldwide establishments they accuse of getting tolerated the Bongos for thus lengthy.
However others disagree, even when they’re joyful to see the Bongos go. The opposition candidate broadly believed to have been the actual election winner, Albert Ondo Ossa, expressed his disappointment at what he described as a ‘palace revolution’ and a ‘household affair’. He’d hoped for a recount, which may have positioned him on the head of a brand new, democratic authorities. What he noticed as an alternative was a transitional authorities that may very well be seen as a continuation of the ousted regime, not least due to the household hyperlinks between the Bongos and Common Nguema, additionally the joyful proprietor of a fortune of unknown origins. Among the new authorities appointments seem to substantiate Ossa’s suspicions.
Past its composition, there’s the important thing query of how lengthy this authorities intends to final. The pomp of Nguema’s inauguration ceremony belies its avowedly non permanent tenure.
That is the eighth profitable navy coup in West and Central Africa over the previous 4 years. Nowhere have the navy retreated to the barracks after implementing what had been invariably described as ‘corrective’ and ‘non permanent’ measures.
On taking up, the navy has seized not solely political energy but additionally management of the financial wealth that sustained the Bongo kleptocracy. They’re unlikely to let go willingly, and the longer they keep, the more durable will probably be to unseat them.
The coup authorities has up to now proven a average face, however there’s no assure this can final. If the individuals who took to the streets to rejoice the coup in the end achieve this once more to protest on the lack of actual change, repression will certainly comply with.
The worldwide group should proceed to induce the navy to decide to a plan for a speedy transition to totally democratic rule. In any other case, the hazard is that the Gabonese individuals will merely transfer from one dictatorship to a different, and nothing will stay of that fleeting second when freedom appeared inside attain.
Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Analysis Specialist, co-director and author for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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