Coup d’etat in Gabon: General Oligui guarantees “free elections” after the transition

Five days after overthrowing Ali Bongo, Gabonese fashionable Brice Oligui Nguema become sworn in on Monday as president of a “transition” whose duration he did now not set. He promised to install “extra democratic establishments” before “unfastened elections”.

Putschist soldiers introduced on August 30 the “give up of the regime” of Ali Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled Gabon for 14 years, much less than an hour after the proclamation of his re-election, believing that it had been rigged. The next day, they proclaimed General Oligui, 48, president of a Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI).

Towards “unfastened elections”

“I swear earlier than God and the Gabonese humans to faithfully keep the republican regime”, “to keep the achievements of democracy”, declared before the judges of the Constitutional Court the brigadier fashionable within the red ceremonial costume of the Republican Guard (GR). The widespread also promised this Monday “loose” and “transparent” elections at the stop of the transition period and undertook to grant amnesty to “prisoners of conscience”.

 

“I am educating the destiny authorities” which will be appointed “to reflect at the mechanisms geared toward amnesting prisoners of judgment of right and wrong” and “facilitating the go back of all exiles”, he declared in his inaugural speech.

The Bongo circle of relatives had ruled this small Central African nation, one of the richest at the continent way to its oil, for extra than 55 years. Its wealth, but, turned into monopolized through an elite accused of “massive” “corruption” and “terrible governance”.

Since taking power, General Oligui has chained, at a frantic pace, hours of extraordinarily publicized discussions with all the “dwelling forces of the Nation”: the clergy, enterprise leaders, exchange unions, society civil society, NGOs, diplomats, newshounds… He rigorously took notes and spoke back questions and lawsuits at duration.

Fight in opposition to corruption, redistribution of wealth…

The new strongman of Libreville insists that he has made the fight towards corruption and bad governance his essential battle horse with the “healing of the economy” and the redistribution of the united states’s income and wealth to the human beings.

 

The African Union, the European Union, the UN and plenty of Western capitals have condemned the coup. The institutions but insisted on a “difference” with the putschs in different countries of the continent because it became preceded, consistent with them, with the aid of a manifestly fraudulent election. “An institutional coup”, even underlined the top of European international relations Josep Borrell. For his component, General Oligui said he become “surprised” through this condemnation through “global institutions”.