Ali Bongo, the guy deposed from his position as president of Gabon, is a guy with boys’ faces.
To some, he is a spoiled playboy prince who has a birthright to run the oil-rich country of Gabon; A former funk singer who took his father’s place to continue his family’s reign (which now lasts 53 years).
For others, he is a reformer: a guy who seeks to diversify Gabon’s economy and foreign prestige through an ambitious environmental agenda.
But a blatant military coup has brought tensions to the surface in the country of more than two million people.
The soldiers said they were nullifying the effects of Saturday’s vote: Ali Bongo had been declared the winner, the opposition said the election had been rigged.
The military claims to have placed Mr. Bongo under space arrest.
Foreigner from Gabon
Ali Bongo was born Alain Bernard Bongo in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville in February 1959.
Even his birth was controversial: for years rumors persisted, which he has denied, that he was followed in southeastern Nigeria during the Biafran war.
Young Alain Bernard was still in first school when his father Omar Bongo took over Gabon in 1967. But the bases of denunciation that would persecute him later were already being prepared.
“He wasn’t born in the presidential palace, still almost. He was about eight years old when his father became president,” Francois Gaulme, a French historian specialising in Gabonese politics, told the BBC.
“The fact that he has attended the most productive schools in Libreville and has not learned the local languages is something he will later be accused of. “
At the age of nine, Ali Bongo was sent to a personal school in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, and then to the Sorbonne, where he studied law. This education abroad has led many Gabonese to consider him a foreigner.
Alain Bernard became Ali and his father Omar in 1973, after converting to Islam, the only members of his family circle to do so.
The move was widely perceived as a way to attract investment from Muslim countries. But Elder Bongo, who in the past was an animist and not baptized into the Christian faith, also cited religious reasons for his conversion.
Funk and Freemasonry
But for young Ali Bongo, it’s never just about politics. From a young age he showed a fondness for football and music, inherited from his mother, the Gabonese singer Patience Dabany.
His fame as a playboy among his young people was cemented with the release of his album A Brand New Man in 1977, produced through Charles Bobbit, the manager of funk legend James Brown.
“Let me be your love, your everything, until the end of time,” Bongo sang on the title track.
Four years after the album’s release, he got into politics.
Ali Bongo served in his father’s government as Minister of Defense, a position he held for 10 years. Prior to that, his first term, as Gabon’s foreign minister in 1989, ended after 3 years due to a constitutional substitution requiring ministers to be over 35. . He was 32 years old at the time.
However, it turns out that not without delay he thought of his father’s natural successor.
“At first, the Gabonese didn’t see Ali Bongo as a serious candidate,” Gaulme said.
“But in the end, he was more considerate than he looked. The first time other people understood that maybe he was serious when he restructured the army. “
It is said that the Gabonese electorate was still not convinced at the time of his father’s death in 2009. But Ali Bongo reappeared as a more reserved character, seeking to disguise himself and make crusades in the provinces.
Despite everything, he was elected with 42% of the vote.
“I won my place, I didn’t kneel,” he said of his election victory. But during his tenure, President Bongo’s legitimacy has been questioned by his opponents.
These claims resurfaced in 2016, when the main rival in the presidential election, Jean Ping, a former chairman of the African Union and father of two of the children of Mr. S. S. Bongo.
Ping alleged fraud in one of the president’s strongholds, Haut-Ogooué province, where Bongo won 95% of the vote with a turnout of 99. 9%.
He won the election by the smallest margin: 6,000 votes.
Civil society supported the allegations of fraud, which were denied by the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG).
Allegations of corruption
Human rights groups also claim that the Bongo family has turned Gabon into a “kleptocratic regime,” plundering its natural resources, oil wealth and tropical forests, while members of Gabon’s political opposition have long accused their relatives of embezzling public funds and running the country as their personal property.
Photos of Real Madrid fan President Bongo driving Argentine footballer Lionel Messi to the capital in a flashy event made headlines in 2017.
A seven-year corruption investigation by French police into the Bongo family, which revealed assets including 39 homes in France and nine luxury cars, failed in 2017.
There is insufficient evidence of alleged “ill-gotten gains” to qualify any of the family members, French news agency AFP reported.
The family has strongly denied all the allegations.
Journalists also pointed to the close, non-public ties between Gabonese elite families as evidence of harsh patronage networks. The African newspaper Jeune Afrique (in French) called them “fiefdoms. “
Bongo has also been criticized for his prominent role in the Freemasons, a society whose Gabonese segment he headed as lodge master.
He is one of the few recent and existing French-speaking African presidents whose Freemason club has been revealed; the others are Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, Idriss Déby of Chad and former President François Bozizé of the Central African Republic, according to French. Vincent Hugeux.
It is said that the Gabonese electorate was still not convinced at the time of his father’s death in 2009. But Ali Bongo reappeared as a more reserved character, seeking to disguise himself and make crusades in the provinces.
Despite everything, he was elected with 42% of the vote.
“I won my place, I didn’t kneel,” he said of his election victory. But during his tenure, President Bongo’s legitimacy has been questioned by his opponents.
These claims resurfaced in 2016, when the main rival in the presidential election, Jean Ping, a former chairman of the African Union and father of two of the children of Mr. S. S. Bongo.
Ping alleged fraud in one of the president’s strongholds, Haut-Ogooué province, where Bongo won 95% of the vote with a turnout of 99. 9%.
He won the election by the smallest margin: 6,000 votes.
Civil society supported the allegations of fraud, which were denied by the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG).
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