Libreville, Apr. 13 (EFE) – The interim president and leader of Gabon’s military junta Brigadier General Brice Oligui Nguema won the presidential elections with an overwhelming majority, according to provisional results released Sunday by Gabon’s Interior Ministry.
According to the results announced at a press conference in Libreville by Interior Minister Hermann Immongault, Nguema won 90.35% of the vote, well ahead of his main rival, former Prime Minister Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, who came in second with 3.02% of the vote, with the other six candidates not exceeding 1%.
These results must now be confirmed in the next few days by the Constitutional Court, which will also hear any appeals.
“Now we have to turn the page on the presidential elections. Tomorrow is a working day, and we must go back to work to build Gabon,” Nguema declared after learning the results at his campaign headquarters in Libreville, surrounded by his ers, as witnessed by EFE.
A little more than 920,000 voters – out of a total population of about 2.5 million people – were called to vote in about 3,000 polling stations in the nine provinces of the country, as well as in the embassies and consulates of about thirty African, European and Asian nations.
Election day went smoothly and was marked by long lines of Gabonese who took to the streets to vote for their new leader. According to the Ministry of the Interior, voter turnout was 70.04%, up from 56.65% in the controversial presidential election of August 2023.
On that occasion, hours after the authorities announced Ali Bongo’s victory, the military seized power and overthrew the president, who took office for the first time after the death of his father, Omar Bongo, in 2009.
The coup leaders and the opposition denounced those elections as lacking transparency, credibility, and inclusiveness.
Saturday’s elections mark a key step in the democratic transition of one of Africa’s leading hydrocarbon powers after the military ended the Bongo family dynasty that had ruled the country since 1967.
Of the five West and Central African countries that have suffered coups since 2020 (the others are Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea-Conakri), Gabon is the only one that is about to return to civilian rule and that maintains close ties with its former colonial power, .
Legislative and local elections are expected in the coming months to complete the transition. EFE
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