Omar Bongo
Omar Bongo Ondimba was a Gabonese politician who was the second president of Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009. A member of the Gabonese Democratic Party, Bongo was promoted to key positions as a young official under Gabon's first President Léon M'ba in the 1960s, before being elected the second vice president in his own right in 1966. In 1967, after M'ba's death, he became the country's president.
Bongo headed the single-party regime of the PDG until 1990, when, faced with public pressure, he was forced to introduce multi-party politics into Gabon. His political survival despite intense opposition to his rule in the early 1990s seemed to stem once again from consolidating power by bringing most of the major opposition leaders at the time to his side. The 1993 presidential election was extremely controversial but ended with his re-election then and the subsequent elections of 1998 and 2005. His respective parliamentary majorities increased and the opposition became more subdued with each succeeding election. After Cuban leader Fidel Castro stepped down in February 2008, Bongo became the world's longest-ruling non-royal leader, retaining this distinction until his death the following year.
Bongo's government received strong diplomatic, financial and military backing from its former coloniser France. He was criticised for in effect having worked for himself, his family and local elites and not for Gabon and its people despite an oil-led GDP per capita growth to one of the highest levels in Africa. Press freedom was curtailed by the regime, which typically banned news outlets critical of Bongo or his entourage. He is also suspected to have been involved in assassinations including those of Ndouna Dépénaud, Joseph Rendjambé and Robert Luong. After Bongo's death in June 2009, his son Ali Bongo, who had long been assigned key ministerial responsibilities by his father, was elected to succeed him in August of that year, serving until he was overthrown by his cousin in 2023.
Early life
The youngest of twelve siblings, Bongo was born Albert-Bernard Bongo on 30 December 1935 in Lewai, French Equatorial Africa, a town of the Haut-Ogooué province in what is now southeastern Gabon near the border with the Republic of the Congo. He was a member of the small Bateke ethnic group. After completing his primary and secondary education in Brazzaville, Bongo held a job at the Post and Telecommunications Public Services, before joining the French military where he served as a second lieutenant and then as a first lieutenant in the Air Force, in Brazzaville, Bangui and Fort Lamy successively, before being honourably discharged as captain.Early political career
Bongo began his political career after Gabon's independence in 1960, rapidly rising through a succession of positions under President Léon M'ba. Bongo campaigned for M. Sandoungout in Haut Ogooué in the 1961 parliamentary election, choosing not to run for election in his own right; Sandoungout was elected and became Minister of Health. Bongo worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a time, and he was named assistant director of the Presidential Cabinet in March 1962; he was named Director seven months later. In 1964, during the only coup attempt in 20th-century Gabon, M'ba was kidnapped and Bongo was held in a military camp in Libreville, though M'ba was restored to power two days later.On 24 September 1965, he was appointed as Presidential Representative and placed in charge of defence and coordination. He was then appointed Minister of Information and Tourism, initially on an interim basis, then formally holding the position in August 1966. M'ba, whose health was declining, appointed Bongo as Vice-President of Gabon on 12 November 1966. In the presidential election held on 19 March 1967, M'ba was re-elected as President and Bongo was elected as vice-president during the same election. Bongo was in effective control of Gabon since November 1966 during M'ba's long illness.
Presidency (1967–2009)
Single-party rule (1967–1990)
Bongo became president on 2 December 1967, following the death of M'ba four days earlier, and was installed by de Gaulle and influential French leaders. Aged 32, Bongo was Africa's fourth youngest president at the time, after captain Michel Micombero of Burundi and sergeant Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo. In March 1968 Bongo decreed Gabon to be a one-party state and changed the name of the Gabonese Independence Party, the Bloc Démocratique Gabonais, to the Parti Démocratique Gabonais.The 1973 general election set the tone for all elections held in the country for the next two decades. Bongo was the sole candidate for president. He and a single list of PDG candidates were elected by 99.56% of the votes cast. In April 1975 Bongo abolished the post of vice-president and appointed his former vice-president, Léon Mébiame, as prime minister, a position Bongo had held concurrently with his presidency from 1967. Mebiame would remain as prime minister until his resignation in 1990.
In addition to the presidency, Bongo held several ministerial portfolios from 1967 onward, including Minister of National Defense, Information, Planning, Prime Minister, the Interior, and many others. Following a Congress of the PDG in January 1979 and the December 1979 elections, Bongo gave up some of his ministerial portfolios and surrendered his functions as head of government to Prime Minister Mebiame. The PDG congress had criticized Bongo's administration for inefficiency and called for an end to the holding of multiple offices. Bongo was again re-elected for a seven-year term in 1979, receiving 99.96% of the popular vote. In the autumn of that same year, Robert Luong, a lover of Bongo's wife, was assassinated by barbouze mercenaries in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, France.
Opposition to President Bongo's regime first appeared in the late 1970s, as economic difficulties became more acute for the Gabonese. The first organized, but illegal, opposition party was the Movement for National Restoration. This moderate opposition group sponsored demonstrations by students and academic staff at the Université Omar Bongo in Libreville in December 1981, when the university was temporarily closed. MORENA accused Bongo of corruption and personal extravagance and of favouring his own Bateke tribe; the group demanded that a multi-party system be restored. Arrests were made in February 1982, when the opposition distributed leaflets criticizing the Bongo regime during a visit by Pope John Paul II. In November 1982, 37 MORENA members were tried and convicted of offences against state security. Severe sentences were handed out, including 20 years of hard labour for 13 of the defendants; all were pardoned, however, and released by mid-1986.
Despite these pressures, Omar Bongo remained committed to one-party rule. In 1985, legislative elections were held which followed past procedures; all nominations were approved by PDG, which then presented a single list of candidates. The candidates were ratified by popular vote on 3 March 1985. In November 1986 Bongo was re-elected by 99.97% of the popular vote.
Multi-party rule (1990–2009)
On 22 May 1990, after strikes, riots and unrest, the PDG central committee and the National Assembly approved constitutional amendments to facilitate the transition to a multi-party system. The existing presidential mandate, effective through 1994, was to be respected. Subsequent elections to the presidency would be contested by more than one candidate, and the presidential term of office was changed to five years with a term limit consisting of one re-election to the office.The next day, 23 May 1990, a vocal critic of Bongo and the leading political opposition leader,, was found dead in a hotel, reportedly murdered by poison. The death of Rendjambe, a prominent business executive and secretary-general of the opposition group Parti gabonais du progres, touched off the worst rioting in Bongo's 23-year rule. Presidential buildings in Libreville were set on fire and the French consul-general and ten oil company employees were taken hostage. French troops evacuated foreigners and a state of emergency was declared in Port Gentil, Rendjambe's hometown and a strategic oil production site. During this emergency Gabon's two main oil producers, Elf and Shell, cut output from to 20,000. Bongo threatened to withdraw their exploration licences unless they restored normal output, which they soon did. Under the moniker Opération Requin, France sent in 500 troops to reinforce the 500-man battalion of Marines permanently stationed in Gabon "to protect the interests of 20,000 resident French nationals". Tanks and troops were deployed around the presidential palace to halt rioters.
In December 1993, Bongo won the first presidential election held under the new multi-party constitution, by a considerably narrower margin of around 51.4%. Opposition candidates refused to validate the election results. Serious civil disturbances led to an agreement between the government and opposition factions to work toward a political settlement. These talks led to the Paris Accords in November 1994, under which several opposition figures were included in a government of national unity. This arrangement soon broke down, however, and the 1996 and 1997 legislative and municipal elections provided the backdrop for renewed partisan politics. The PDG won a landslide victory in the legislative election, but several major cities, including Libreville, elected opposition mayors during the 1997 local election. Bongo was eventually successful in consolidating power again, with most of the major opposition leaders being either co-opted by being given high-ranking posts in the government or bought off, ensuring his comfortable re-election in 1998.
File:Vladimir Putin 24 April 2001-1.jpg|thumb|Bongo with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow whilst on a state visit in 2001.
In 2003, Bongo secured a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits and increasing the presidential term length to seven years from five. His critics accused him of intending to rule for life. Bongo was re-elected on 27 November 2005, receiving 79.2 percent of the vote, comfortably ahead of his four challengers. He was sworn in for a seven-year term on 19 January 2006.