Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba (2009-present), recently declared his intention to run for re-election in the country’s presidential election on August 26. To say the obvious, he is anticipated to win.

Ali Bongo, the son of former President Omar Bongo (who controlled the country from 1967 to 2009), has the support of his father’s ruling Parti Démocratique Gabonese (PDG). For more than a half-century, the party has held sway in the oil-rich Central African country.

For the last 56 years, the Bongo family has maintained control. It has accomplished this through single-party rule, corruption in the mining and oil industries, and political kinship. According to some estimates, Ali Bongo personally holds US$1 billion in assets, much of which is hidden abroad, making him Gabon’s richest man.

Furthermore, the constitution has been modified multiple times throughout the years to ensure the Bongos’ continuing power.

First, term limitations were abolished from the constitution in 2003, allowing Bongo to stay as president indefinitely.

Second, in 2003, conventional two-round ballots were replaced by single-round ballots. This was done to prevent Bongo’s opponents from rallying around a single contender in a run-off election.

Third, instead of needing the winner to achieve a majority, Bongo can be re-elected with a plurality. This indicates that a majority of less than 50% is possible as long as the winner receives the most votes. Ali Bongo, who received 49.8% of the vote in the 2016 election, would not be president today if a majority of votes were necessary.

Fourth, the presidential term was lowered from seven to five years in April 2023, guaranteeing that presidential elections will take place at the same time as parliamentary and local elections.

Previously, after presidential elections, opposition parties would band together to defeat Bongo’s ruling party in parliamentary and local elections. The shift increases the likelihood that Bongo and his party will win control of all government institutions in a single election.

The ruling PDG has grown its representation in the national legislature, controlling 63 out of 120 seats in 1990 and 98 out of 143 seats in 2018. The ruling party’s senate seats have likewise increased from 52 out of 92 in 1997 to 46 out of 67 in 2021.

The Bongos’ continued leadership has not been ideal for a country of only 2.3 million inhabitants. Gabon is a resource-rich country that was dubbed the “Kuwait of Africa” at one point. Because of its small population and vast oil reserves, the country’s per capita income is at least US$13,949.16. The per capita income in adjacent Cameroon is barely US$3,733.

However, Gabon’s “average” is belied by a population in which one-third of individuals live in poverty and unemployment among young people is over 37%.

Dynastic republic

Gabon is a “dynastic republic” rather than a monarchy.

Presidents have centralised power in their hands and developed systems of personal control in dynastic republics. They pass on governmental authority to their family and clan through nepotism. Sons and daughters, spouses and ex-wives, brothers and sisters, half-siblings and step-siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, in-laws, illicit offspring, and so on are all included.

The traditional ideal of a legal-rational state, in which position and rank are dispersed based on merit in the name of rational (efficient and effective) government functioning, is perverted under this system.

The institutionalisation of traditional family authority through the contemporary vehicle of a single governing party has been crucial in all dynastic republics across the world, including Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Syria, Azerbaijan, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and, most recently, Cambodia.

This is known as the Parti Démocratique Gabonais in Gabon. The party controls the White House and has a majority in both the National Assembly (98/143 members) and the Senate (46/67 seats). It also has power over the courts, as well as the regional and local administrations.

It is vital to recognise that no one can reign alone. A man and his family can control a republic with millions of people only with a big party organisation.

But why has one man’s and his family’s reign been tolerated?

The explanation is that the political elite require him to maintain their positions.

Gordon Tullock, an economist, proposed in 1987 that dynastic succession appeals to non-familial elites who are scared of a leadership contest. Professor of Government Jason Brownlee examined 258 non-monarchical autocrats in 2007 to test this idea. He discovered

According to political scholars Bruno Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith,

In 1967, Omar Bongo established the PDG as a de jure one-party regime. He authorised the creation of opposition parties following constitutional revisions in 1990. However, because he never staged free and fair elections, the democratic opposition has never been able to depose the Bongos or their governing party.

In Gabon, elections are followed by demonstrations, which are then met with security force crackdowns and, finally, quiet.

The opposition

A total of 19 people have registered to run for president. Former Prime Minister Raymond Ndong Sima, former Vice President Pierre-Claver Maganga Moussavou, Union Nationale coalition leader Paulette Missambo, and former Mines Minister Hughes Alexandre Barro Chambrier are among them.

Chambrier has spent the last year doing everything he can to gather the other opposition leaders around a single candidate. However, his efforts were futile.

Chambrier may be the candidate with the best chance of defeating Bongo, but the Gabonese opposition is once again split.

So it appears like the Bongo family, as well as the PDG, will stay in power after the 2023 elections. Though Ali Bongo’s administration has disputed such rumours, it appears that plans for Bongo’s eldest son Noureddine to inherit the kingdom are already in the works.

Source: Adomonline.com