Gabon

Douglas A. Yates

A cabinet reshuffle in January reflected President Bongo’s commitment to main- taining his economic policies. But the summer oil-price collapse clearly threatened his ambitious ‘ Emergent’ programme, and triggered anti-regime protests, violently repressed, which foreshadowed a coming fiscal crisis. Efforts to offset fall- ing crude oil revenues included a major new manganese deal with India.

Domestic Politics

On 24 January, a cabinet reshuffle started the government calendar. was named prime minister by President Ali Bongo, replacing Raymond Ndong Sima. Ondo, a former minister of both education and culture, before becom- ing the first deputy speaker of the parliament, had legislative experience useful in implementing Ali Bongo’s ‘Gabon Emergent’ public-spending programme (i.e. moving Gabon into the ‘emerging countries’ category). Both Sima and Ondo came from the country’s largest ethnic group, the Fang, and both were loyalists within the ruling party.

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But Ondo’s appointment was also influenced by a longstanding unwritten tradi- tion. The president’s father, was a Téké, a minority ethnic group. In order to legitimise his rule, he had long made it his practice to appoint as prime minister a Fang from the Estuary region. His son Ali had followed this tradition to some extent, but had deliberately chosen his two prime ministers – first Sima and now Ondo – from the Fang of the Woleu N’Tem region. This move could be seen as part of the president’s long-term strategy to undermine his strongest and most vocal opponents, among them his father’s former prime ministers, such as presi- dential contenders Andre Mba Obame and Jean Eyeghe Ndong, who came from the long-influential Fang of the Estuary region. On 19 February, , long-term foreign minister under the late Omar Bongo, one of the best-known Gabonese politicians and former chairman of the AU Commission, submitted in writing his resignation from the ruling ‘Parti Démocratique Gabonais’ and joined the opposition. With his international con- nections and domestic celebrity, gained from his long service to the elder Bongo, Ping quickly became the most serious potential challenger to Ali Bongo. Before 2014, Ping had avoided making any political public declarations, but now he stated, “I have decided to break that silence, and make it clear that I have nothing, abso- lutely nothing to do with the powers that be.” The opposition press continued to be censored and intimidated. On 2 September, two private newspapers, ‘La Loupe’ and ‘L’Aube’, were pirated, with counterfeit printed editions distributed in the kiosks. Their front pages contained editorials praising the Bongo government, although both periodicals were strident critics of the regime. Subsequently, the editors of ‘L’Aube’ accused the president’s men of having mounted this pirating operation, pointing their finger at the influ- ential Maixent Accrombessi, Bongo’s chief of staff. On 19 December, investigative journalist Jonas Moulenda was arrested, detained and questioned after publishing an article in ‘Echos du Nord’, one of the best-known newspapers close to opposi- tion parties, about ritual murders in the country that had gone unpunished. His article was highly critical of the Bongo regime, the defence forces and the police. The National Communication Council suspended publication of the newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor – just one example of press censorship and intimidation. On 10 November, the Gabonese government filed a complaint against French investigative journalist Pierre Péan after the publication of his book entitled ‘Nouvelles Affaires Africaines’ declared that the , Ali Bongo, was not the natural child of former president Omar Bongo but an adopted Biafran orphan from Nigeria. The book claimed that Ali had produced a fake birth certifi- cate in 2009 when he filed his candidacy for the presidential elections, giving his name as ‘Ali Bongo Ondimba’, although it is well known that he did not use the first name ‘Ali’ until his conversion to Islam in 1973 and, like his father, only added the patronymic ‘Ondimba’ around the turn of the century. The president appeared on