Gabon’s Bongo declared winner of presidential poll

LIBREVILLE – Ali Ben Bongo, son of Gabon’s long-time ruler Omar Bongo, won an election to succeed his late father with 41.73 per cent of the vote, the interior minister announced yesterday.

Just over 800 000 voters had registered to take part in Sunday’s election, called after Omar Bongo’s death of a heart attack in June ended nearly 42 years of tight rule over the central African oil nation.’This is a victory for the Gabonese people. Ali Ben Bongo has won it. I salute his courage because at the beginning nothing would have suggested he was going to win,’ Communications Minister Laure Olga Gondjout told reporters.Security forces earlier used tear gas to disperse hundreds of opposition supporters who had led an overnight sit-in on a square near the election commission in the capital Libreville.A Reuters witness said the streets of Libreville were empty apart from a heavy security presence.Ben Bongo’s rivals had said they feared the official results were being massaged to ensure a dynastic succession from father to son, an accusation Bongo, the ex-defence minister, denied.Observers and financial markets have played down the risk of major instability in the tiny country but some unrest was expected given the dispute over the result.Analysts were not surprised by Ben Bongo’s victory.’The result is not unexpected, Ali Ben Bongo had seemed to be groomed by his father, but there has been a groundswell of opposition. There is definitely a sense on the ground that people didn’t want to see a Bongo dynasty,’ said Kissy Agyeman-Togobo of IHS Global Insight.But little change was expected in the business-friendly policies espoused by the late president.’We would expect his policies to be broadly in line with his father’s, so relatively friendly to foreign investors, both in the financial sector and oil industry. It’s relatively good news for foreign businessmen and investors,’ said Richard Segal, a specialised debt broker with Knight Libertas.The death of 73-year-old Omar Bongo ended a period that brought his country stability but also allegations that he lavished petrodollars on family and friends rather than using them to alleviate widespread poverty.Gabon hosts oil firms including France’s Total and US-based Vaalco , and is one of the few sub-Saharan countries to have launched a Eurobond.Analysts say Ben Bongo now faces the challenge of diversifying the economy to replace revenue from Gabon’s dwindling oil reserves.- Nampa-Reuters