Nguema, the head of the Junta, promises to reconstruct Gabon following a resounding victory

With a landslide victory in Gabon’s presidential election over the weekend, junta leader Brice Oligui Nguema was given a seven-year mandate to terminate the Bongo family’s more than 50 years of father-and-son dominance.

The 50-year-old, who campaigned for office after overthrowing President Ali Bongo in a coup in 2023, will now need to fulfill promises to eradicate corruption and diversify an economy dependent on oil.

In addition, despite all the rhetoric of a new beginning, he is a distant cousin of Ali Bongo, so he will need to demonstrate that he can split with the regimes he previously supported.

Nguema addressed supporters on Sunday after preliminary results showed he had received 90.35 percent of the vote. “My dear compatriots, as I told you during the election campaign – and I repeat – there is no happiness without effort,” Nguema said.

“Monday is a workday tomorrow… “We are building our nation,” he declared.

As he rode a wave of public enthusiasm for the coup and his promises to combat graft, Nguema was largely predicted to defeat the seven other contenders in the central African country.

In 2023, a week after taking over, Nguema publicly humiliated the leaders of government organizations and gave them a 48-hour deadline to restore any money that had been stolen.

Government officials testified before a commission looking into corruption, and a crackdown resulted in the arrest of several corporate executives.

According to Joseph Tonda, a sociologist at Omar Bongo University in Libreville, “Gabonese tell themselves that someone who works with this much ardor is trying to transform things.”

The instability that plagued voting in 2016 and 2023—two elections that Ali Bongo’s detractors claimed were rigged in his favor—did not affect Saturday’s election. Following the announcement of the results of the 2023 election, Nguema took control.

We weren’t even allowed to go outside during those earlier competitions. Worah Jean Yves, a university student, reported that there were gunshots, internet outages, and shoplifting.

“But this time, everything went very smoothly, without any problems.”

FEARS AND HOPES

The first results showed that former Prime Minister Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, Nguema’s most well-known opponent, received slightly more than 3% of the vote. At a press conference on Monday, he admitted his loss, but he said the lopsided result cast doubt on the election’s legitimacy.

It is unclear, according to analysts, if Nguema’s term would be the last departure from the past.

Ali Bongo’s father, Omar Bongo, who governed for more than 40 years until his death in 2009, had Nguema as his aide-de-camp. Under his cousin Ali Bongo, Nguema oversaw the Republican Guard of Gabon.

Although he has pledged to resign from all military positions, he was an army general when he came to office and continues to hold that status.

“Many Gabonese hope that this is a really transformational moment for their country,” said Rogers Orock, a Gabon expert at Lafayette College in the United States.

“This new order is old wine – authoritarian despotism that Gabonese have historically had to deal with – in a new bottle,” he said, adding that there was cause for concern.

Nguema’s own financial situation has been questioned. He paid over $1 million in cash for three properties in the U.S. state of Maryland, according to a 2020 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists, opens new tab.

He said that his private life should be respected and declined to answer any more questions from OCCRP.

In contrast to other juntas that have seized power in the region recently and terminated long-standing defense collaboration with Paris, Nguema has pledged to maintain Gabon’s historically tight relations to former colonial master France.

Nguema claimed to have dreamed “of a Gabon that rises from the ashes” when he declared his candidacy last month.

“I am a builder and I need your courage, your force, to build this nation,” he stated.