As expected, Ali Bongo Ondimba announced on Sunday his candidacy in Gabon’s presidential elections, scheduled for August 26. It would be a third term for the Head of State, who has been in power for fourteen years.
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On Sunday, July 9, Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, in power for nearly 14 years, announced that he will run for a third term in the August 26 presidential election.
“Today I officially announce that I am a candidate” for the presidential elections, he told hundreds of supporters chanting “Ali President!”, in a speech broadcast live on Twitter at the Nkok Special Economic Zone (SEZ), near the capital, Libreville.
For the moment, Ali Bongo Ondimba is the clear favorite for the presidential elections, since the opposition is advancing in a very dispersed order, with some twenty personalities who have already announced their intention to run against the outgoing head of state.
In power for 14 years
The 64-year-old head of state was first elected in 2009 on the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled the country for more than 41 years, and was narrowly re-elected in 2016.
His candidacy will have to be ratified by an investiture congress, scheduled for Monday, of his all-powerful Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), which dominates Parliament by a wide margin and is the clear favorite in legislative and municipal elections to be held on the same day. day than the presidential elections, on August 26.
The formal inauguration of Ali Bongo Ondimba by the PDG on Monday will be a formality, as the party has been begging him for a third term for more than a year.
The official candidacies will be closed on Tuesday. The official election campaign will run from midnight on August 11 to midnight on August 25, but most of the candidates have been campaigning across the country for the past year, with Ali Bongo going on an intense “Republican tour” in the last few months, handing out promises. The opposition has denounced that it is a “pre-campaign” carried out with state resources.
*With AFP; adapted from its original in French
