Why did Brice Oligui miss his date with history?
When Brice Oligui Nguema seized power in August 2023 , following the coup d'état that overthrew Ali Bongo, he represented in the eyes of many Gabonese a chance to break with governance marked by a regime that was at the end of its tether. A hero of the transition, Oligui was supposed to give hope to a country that aspired to a profound political overhaul. However, a year later, his record is raising more and more doubts. The political decisions he made have not convinced, and it is his controversial alliance with the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), Ali Bongo's own party, hated by a large section of the population, which comes as a high point to close more than a year of decline.
In a press release from #CTRI , it was said that political party activities are suspended. The PDG is making his political comeback and is opposing the CTRI's injunctions. Finally in Gabon, who is in charge..?
— Issah Dia (@IssahDia) October 13, 2024
Gabon: When the CEO's motion of support for his CTRI downfalls arouses indignation, anger and confusion https://t.co/imT6HmPbHR #Gabon #CEO #CTRI #Bongo #OliguiNguema #transition
— Info241.com (@Info241_) October 13, 2024
🇬🇦 #Gabon : when the deposed Prime Minister @BilieByNze still lectures @oliguinguema , it's because @ctrigabon you failed! 🤯 https://t.co/CmIuQRCkuH
— CTRI Times (@CtriTimes) October 15, 2024
The CEO Alliance Trap: Continuity or Betrayal?
The past year has been marked by nothing but scandals . Corruption within SEEG , where the president's close associates are implicated in a vast embezzlement affair while power cuts are increasing, the purchase of two brand new, luxuriously equipped planes for presidential use in the middle of the "transition" period, the favouritism of the Fang recalling the dark hours of ethnic division in Africa , pathetic moral affairs mixing media and political life, a quasi -dictatorial draft constitution reserving access to the presidency to Brice Oligui alone, contested by the entire population, a trip to New York worthy of a bad film on African politics ... Not a week has gone by without the President of the Transition being at the centre of a controversy.
Someone who must be silenced forever is now playing the savior under the Transition! Long live the restoration of the PDG👏👏👏 https://t.co/eotSfTK6F5
— OVENG Ndoum'Obame (@richie_ndomez) October 13, 2024
As long as the PDG leaders, who brought this country to its knees, continue to enjoy impunity, the President of the Transition will never succeed in convincing the Gabonese people that his coup d'état was a coup of liberation.
— The Shadow Man (@Chog_Tchikaya) October 12, 2024
But the alliance with the Gabonese Democratic Party, the formation of Ali Bongo, the same Ali Bongo that Oligui accused of all the evils at the time of the coup d'état, is certainly the straw that broke the camel's back. This alliance surprised, even shocked, many Gabonese , who hoped to see the end of this political formation deemed responsible for the stagnation of the country, and described by Oligui and his followers as a vestige of the past to be eradicated just a few months ago.
In reality, the alliance between Oligui and the PDG was born out of strategic necessity, because despite the public detestation of this formation, the President of the Transition needs the party's "elephants", their apparatus and their "electoral" experience to win the upcoming referendum. For Oligui, ensuring a smooth transition meant securing the support of the elites of the previous regime because he finds himself in an uncertain situation.
By partnering with the PDG, Oligui has sealed his fate: instead of positioning himself as the symbol of a democratic renaissance, he has rehabilitated the old system, thus blurring the message of change that he carried when he took power. The early presidential elections, scheduled for 2025, are already shaping up to be a biased race, with a resurrected PDG and a recomposed landscape that is incomprehensible to the citizen .
Of course, the CEO who calls on his activists to vote “YES” in the next referendum.
— 𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘆 𝗥𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗼 (@RotondoAndrey) October 12, 2024
Perhaps we had declared victory too soon. The culmination of an illusory transition from the baptismal font. https://t.co/hoCXACdACB
Does Oligui need the expertise of election riggers?
Should we recall the context of the 2023 coup? Brice Oligui and his people accused Ali Bongo and the PDG of having manipulated the electoral process, of having urgently modified the constitution in favor of Ali Bongo, of having announced false results and of having rigged the entire election? Are these not the practices that supposedly led Oligui to take up arms to give the country a "democratic breath"?
So what should the Gabonese people, spectators of this theatre and this turnaround, think? Is the PDG not so bad after all? Or, in a more than tense political context, does Oligui really need the expertise of those he accused just a few months ago of having rigged the country's elections?
But who is the opposition?
In this context, where the putschists ally themselves with the putschés, only one question comes to mind: who embodies the opposition?
Alain Claude Billie By Nzé seems to want to take on this role but, according to all evidence, does not really have the magnitude of an Albert Ondo Ossa in 2023. This same Albert Ondo Ossa seems to appear more as a commentator than an actor in political life, sometimes benevolent sometimes ironic with regard to the "transition" . Other figures like Omar Denis Bongo Ondimba, considered by many as the only Bongo capable of redressing the situation, seem to be waiting or even disinterested in the election.
It is sad to note that the Gabonese who refuse the alliance of the carp and the Oligui-CEO rabbit seem to be orphans. This situation does not bode well a few weeks before the referendum, the outcome of which is more than uncertain, as the country finds itself divided and lost in a transition between two sadly identical situations.
