Gabon’s main opposition group, Alternance 2023, said it was absurd for the military junta to swear in General Brice Oligui Nguema, when what it should do is hand power back to civilians.
“We were happy that Ali Bongo was overthrown but … we hope that the international community will stand up in favour of the Republic and the democratic order in Gabon by asking the military to give back the power to the civilians,” Alexandra Pangha, spokesperson for Alternance 2023 leader Albert Ondo Ossa, told the BBC.
She said that the junta’s plan to inaugurate Nguema as head of state on Monday was “absurd”.
Alternance 2023 said it wants a full vote count from Tuesday’s election, which it said would show Ondo Ossa had won.
Gabon’s election commission said after the election that Bongo had been re-elected with 64% of the vote, while Ondo Ossa secured almost 31%. Ballot counting was done without independent observers amid an internet blackout.
Pangha said the opposition hoped to get an invitation from the junta to discuss the Central African country’s transition plan but said it had not received anything yet.
The junta has not made its transition plans public.
The African Union’s Peace and Security Council demanded on Thursday that the military refrain from any interference in the political process and called for fair and transparent elections.
It said it will impose sanctions on the coup leaders if they do not return to barracks and restore constitutional order.
France, Gabon’s former colonial ruler, and other Western powers have condemned the military takeover.
Military officers seized power in a coup on Wednesday minutes after an announcement that Bongo had secured a third term in an election, ending his family’s nearly 60-year hold on power.
They placed him under house arrest and installed General Brice Oligui Nguema as transitional leader.
The coup – West and Central Africa’s eighth in three years- drew cheering crowds onto the streets of the capital, Libreville.
But the opposition, which says it is the rightful winner of Saturday’s election, has raised objections.
Bongo was elected 2009, taking over from his late father who came to power in 1967. Opponents say the family did little to share Gabon’s oil and mining wealth.
Before being detained, the Bongos lived in a luxurious palace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They own expensive cars and properties in France and the United States, often paid for in cash, according to a 2020 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists.
Meanwhile, almost a third of the country’s 2.3 million people live in poverty.
