Who is Ali Bongo, president of Gabon?

To some, he is a spoilt, playboy prince who sees ruling the oil-rich
Gabon as his birthright; a one-time funk singer who stepped into his
father’s shoes to continue his family’s 50-year rule.

To others, he is a reformer – a man who, they would argue, was voted into power democratically by the masses.

But
his recent ill health has pushed tensions to the surface in this
country of just more than two million people. On 7 January, a group of soldiers tried – and apparently failed – to take control.

Among
their stated reasons was an attempt to “restore democracy” following
the 2016 election, which Mr Bongo narrowly won amid accusations of fraud
and acts of violence.

Gabon’s outsider

Ali Bongo was born Alain Bernard Bongo in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville in February 1959.

But
even his birth was controversial. Rumours, which he has always denied,
have persisted for years that he was adopted from the Nigerian
south-east at the time of the Biafran war.

The young
Alain Bernard was still in primary school when his father Omar Bongo
took control of Gabon in 1967. Already, however, the groundwork was
being laid for criticisms which would haunt him later in life.

“He
wasn’t born in the presidential palace, but almost. He was about eight
when his father became president,” François Gaulme, a French historian
and author on Gabonese politics, told the BBC.

“The fact that he
went to the best schools in Libreville and didn’t learn local languages
was something he would get criticised for later on.”

At the age of nine, Ali Bongo was sent to a private school in the upmarket Paris suburb of Neuilly, and later, to the Sorbonne where he studied law. This international upbringing led many in Gabon to view him as an outsider.

Alain Bernard became Ali and his father Omar in 1973, after converting to Islam – the only members of their family to do so.

The
decision was widely seen a way to attract investment from Muslim
countries. But the elder Bongo, who was previously an animist and not
baptised in the Christian faith, also evoked spiritual reasons for his
conversion.

Funk music and freemasonry

It
was never all about politics for the young Ali Bongo, however. He
showed an early passion for football and music – something inherited
from his mother, the Gabonese singer Patience Dabany.

A
reputation for being a playboy during his youth was cemented with the
release of his 1977 album A Brand New Man, produced by funk legend James
Brown’s manager, Charles Bobbit.

“Let me be your darling, Your everything, ’til the end of time,” Bongo crooned on the title track:

Whether his love of funk has remained is unknown. In his more recent
years as president, Ali Bongo is said to enjoy jazz, bossa nova and
classical music.

Within four years of the album release, he had turned his attention to politics.

Ali
Bongo served in his father’s government as minister of defence, a role
he held for 10 years. Before that his first appointment, as Gabon’s
foreign minister in 1989, ended after three years because of a
constitutional change requiring ministers to be over the age of 35. He
was 32 at the time.

However, it seems he wasn’t immediately seen as a natural successor to his father.

“In the beginning, the Gabonese people didn’t see [Ali Bongo] as a serious candidate,” said Mr Gaulme.

“But in the end, he has been more thoughtful than he seemed. The first time people saw he could be serious was when he restructured the army.”

Gabon’s voters were still apparently unconvinced by the time of his
father’s death in 2009. But Ali Bongo re-emerged as a more reserved
figure, attempting to dress down and travelling to campaign in the
provinces.

“His father was a populist but he was a privileged kid, it didn’t really stick,” said Mr Gaulme.

In the end, Ali Bongo was elected, winning 42% of votes.

“I
won my place, it didn’t fall in my lap,” he said of his election
victory. But throughout his entire time in office, President Bongo’s
legitimacy has been questioned by his opponents.

The claims would
resurface in 2016, when the main challenger in the presidential election
was Jean Ping, the former African Union chairman and father to two of
Mr Bongo’s sister’s children.

Mr Ping alleged fraud in one of the
president’s main strongholds, Haut-Ogooué province, where Mr Bongo won
95% of the vote on a turnout of 99.9%.

He won overall by the slimmest of margins – just 6,000 votes.

Civil society backed up the allegations of rigging, which were denied by the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG).

Corruption allegations

It is not the only criticism of Mr Bongo’s rule from rights groups.

They
allege the Bongo family turned Gabon into a “kleptocratic regime”,
looting its natural resources, oil wealth and rainforests, while members
of Gabon’s political opposition have long accused family members of
embezzling public money and running the country as their private
property.

Pictures of Real Madrid fan President Bongo driving
Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi around the capital in a flashy car
made headlines in 2017.

A seven-year corruption investigation by
French police into the Bongo family, which revealed assets including 39
properties in France and nine luxury cars, was dropped in 2017.

There
had been insufficient evidence of alleged “ill-gotten gains” to charge
any of the family members, reported French news agency AFP.

The family strongly denies all the allegations.

However,
according to Mr Gaulme, President Ali Bongo does “have a tendency to
see himself as an heir, to think Gabon belongs to him”.

Journalists
have also pointed to the close and personal links between Gabon’s elite
families as evidence of powerful networks of patronage. African news site Jeune Afrique (in French) has branded them “fiefdoms”.

Mr Bongo has also been criticised over his prominent role in the Freemasons – a society whose Gabonese chapter he led, as lodge master.

He is one of a handful of recent and present Francophone African presidents whose Freemason membership has been out in the open
– the others being Congo-Brazzaville’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, Chad’s
Idriss Déby, and former President François Bozizé of the Central African
Republic, according to French author Vincent Hugeux.

However, his supporters point to his role in attempting to diversify
Gabon’s oil-dependent economy, in the face of declining oil reserves.

Gabon’s oil sector has accounted for 80% of exports, 45% of GDP, and 60% of fiscal revenue over the past five years, according to World Bank data.

Analyst Paul Melly of the British think-tank Chatham House told The Guardian
that Ali Bongo was “very sharp and he could see that the difficulty
with producing raw materials was that it doesn’t create many jobs.

“His goal has been to move Gabon to a higher-tech, skilled economy.”

Alongside
this, there have been new investments in mining and a “serious effort
to develop a more environmentally sustainable approach to use of the
rainforest”, Mr Melly told the BBC.

All of which, he added, is
“certainly significant within the constraints imposed by Gabon’s small
population and a cost base that is high by African standards”.

President
Bongo has also used his own contacts to press harder for a stronger
economy, travelling the world to find new investors and partners in
countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, while still keeping close ties
with France.

It was during a visit to Saudi Arabia for an
investment conference in October 2018 that he was first admitted to
hospital. He eventually left for Morocco at the end of November, where
he remains.

Frustration over the lack of information surrounding
his illness is thought to be one of the triggers behind January’s
attempted coup. It certainly suggests that some in Gabon – a country
where a third of people live below the poverty line – would like to see
change.

For the moment, however, it seems power still lies with the president and his allies.

Source : BBC