The French oil company Total has evacuated its staff from Port Gentil, Gabon after unrest surrounding the recently held national elections. The French president has supported the results giving the leadership to Ali-Ben Bongo Ondimba.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sent a letter of congratulations to Ali Ben Bongo on his victory in Gabon's controversial presidential election.
Opponents of Mr Bongo, whose father, Omar, ruled the nation for four decades, have called for a recount and say the election was rigged.
Clashes broke out at the announcement of the election result last week, with French property targeted.
Some activists say France, the former colonial power, helped rig the vote.
The French news agency AFP says Gabon officials showed journalists Mr Sarkozy's letter.
"Following the announcement by the constitutional court of the presidential election results, I am happy to address to you my congratulations and wishes of success in fulfilling the responsibilities that await you," it said.
The French embassy in London confirmed to the BBC that a letter of congratulations had been sent by Mr Sarkozy.
He went on to assure Gabon's president-elect of France's wish for good relations between the two countries.
'Scandalous'
It comes as 16 of Mr Bongo's defeated rivals held a press conference to call for a recount of the votes.
Former Prime Minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong, acting as spokesman for the group, said there had been "huge manipulation" of the results.
"Very scandalous rigging of ballot boxes, as well as incomprehensive swelling of voting lists have contributed to falsify the vote in favour of PDG [the ruling party]," he said.
Among the defeated candidates at the press conference was Pierre Mamboundou, who led protests against the result and was reported to have fled into hiding after being injured in the unrest.
Mr Bongo said the defeated candidates should take their disputes to court.
And Information Minister Laure Gondjout insisted the vote was free and fair, saying she was "flabbergasted" to hear that the other candidates were disputing the result.
"It's just a way for them to explain or justify to the voters that they were defeated," she told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
"Even if we were to count the vote we would come to the same result."
There were several outbreaks of violence after the election result was announced - particularly in the second city of Port Gentil, where the French consulate was set alight.
But the BBC's Linel Kwatsi, in Gabon, says the situation in both Port Gentil and the capital, Libreville, has now calmed down.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8243476.stm
Published: 2009/09/08 08:56:14 GMT
Tullow Oil Hasn’t Lost Any Production From Riots in Gabon
By Eduard Gismatullin
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Tullow Oil Plc, the U.K. explorer with the most licenses in Africa, hasn’t lost any production in Gabon as a result of recent unrest.
Riots started in Port-Gentil after the announcement of the disputed victory of Ali-Ben Bongo Ondimba in presidential elections. A curfew announced last week to defuse violence is due to end later today, according to the African nation’s government.
“Tullow has some staff in Libreville who are all safe, none in Port-Gentil,” the London-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. “Production has not been impacted.”
Tullow, which has interests in 16 licenses in Gabon, produces on average 12,000 barrels a day from the country, equal to about a fifth of its total output, according to the company’s Web site. It partners in Gabon include Addax Petroleum Corp., Sojitz Corp., PetroEnergy Resources Corp., Sasol Ltd., PetroSA and Oranje-Nassau Groep BV.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net
Sunday, September 06, 2009
22:15 Mecca time, 19:15 GMT
Hundreds flee clashes in Gabon
Total, the French oil company, has evacuated its staff from Port Gentil
Hundreds of people have fled Port Gentil, Gabon's second city, some in canoes, after three days of protests.
Citizens left the city on Sunday, after clashes between security forces and protesters who are disputing Ali Ban Bongo's presidential election win on Wednesday.
Three people have died in Port Gentil, the country's oil hub, in the violence and the government is contemplating using emergency powers if the unrest does not cease, Jean-Francois Ndongou, the interior minister, said.
However, the level of violence in Port Gentil decreased on Saturday night compared to earlier days, which had seen looting and attacks on French interests. France is Gabon's former colonial power.
"The president and the prime minister do not want to put Port Gentil under a state of siege. We are not yet at that level," Ndongou said.
"But if peace, order and harmony are not restored, we are going to solicit authorisation to do so from parliament."
Employees evacuated
Port Gentil is already under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, but a state of emergency can be called only after cabinet and parliamentary discussion.
A club run by Total, the French oil company, and the French consulate in Port Gentil were torched.
French paratroopers are guarding the consulate and Total has evacuated its staff to Libreville, the capital.
Some opposition supporters believe that France helped Bongo, 50, to fix the election, allegations that both Paris and Bongo have denied.
Ndongou said that none of the deaths were caused by the military and that the government would accept an international investigation into the clashes.
Legal challenge
In Libreville, the capital, where tensions had abated, Bongo, the son of the late leader Omar Bongo, made his first appearance since the election.
He appealed for calm and urged his rivals to take their allegations of fraud in the August 30 poll to court.
Opposition leaders have said that they will legally contest the election results.
Bongo received 41.7 per cent of the vote compared to about 25 per cent each for his closest rivals Andre Mba Obame, the former interior minister, and Pierre Mamboundou, a veteran opposition leader.
Omar Bongo died in June after 41 years of rule.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Minister Salloukh: “Lebanese in Gabon are 'safe' despite weekend violence”
Lebanon’s ambassador in Gabon reassured the Lebanese Minister Fawzi Salloukh on Monday about the Lebanese citizens living in the African country.
Violence erupted in Gabon’s second city of Port-Gentil on Thursday when Ali Bongo was declared the winner of presidential election to succeed his father Omar Bongo who died in June. Port-Gentil is considered the economic capital of Gabon and almost all Lebanese reside in it.
Dozens of residents had fled Port-Gentil aboard motorized canoes over the weekend AFP Reported. However, flights resumed from the peninsular seaport on Monday after being suspended when France’s consulate and a club for French oil workers were torched.
Daily star wrote that more than 5000 Lebanese work in Gabon, most of them are owners of big investment firms. Although none of them was harmed, vehicles owned by Lebanese were destroyed and several shops were vandalized by demonstrators in the city.
After a conversation on his phone with the Lebanese ambassador Mrs. Baz, Minister Salloukh comforted the Lebanese, especially those who have relatives in Gabon, “All the Lebanese living in Port-Gentil are safe and sound, despite all the turmoil and violence that occurred in Gabon city during the week-end.” Salloukh said.
He concluded by saying that a detailed report on the Lebanese losses will be issued to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry in the coming days.
Gabon court confirms Bongo's presidential victory
(AP) – 3 days ago
LIBREVILLE, Gabon — The president of Gabon's constitutional court is declaring the son of Gabon's late dictator the winner of last weekend's disputed presidential election.
Marie Madeleine Mborantsuo, the head of the court, confirmed that Ali Bongo had won the election with 41.7 percent of the vote.
The announcement ends the opposition's last chance for legal redress. Opposition leaders, including Pierre Mamboundou, claim the election was marred by massive fraud.
The head of Mamboundou's political party, Louis-Gaston Mayila, says the opposition is considering forming a "parallel government."
Hours before the announcement, protesters angry at Bongo's victory set a police station on fire.
France Puts Troops on Alert in Former Colony
LIBREVILLE, Gabon (AP) — France put its troops in the former colony of Gabon on alert and demonstrators set fire to a police station in the country's second-largest city Friday after Ali Bongo, the son of the country's late dictator, was declared the winner of presidential elections.
Police from the capital arrived in force in Port Gentil, the hub of the nation's oil industry and an opposition stronghold, and took up positions in front of broken storefronts. Virtually every shop on the town's main boulevard had been looted Thursday and into the night, said Dianney Madztou, the editor-in-chief of local TV station Top Bendje. Sporadic gunfire rang out in the morning.
Police reinforcements were flown in from Libreville in the morning but despite the beefed up security, protesters set the main police station on fire, Madztou said.
But calm appeared to be returning to Libreville, the humid, seaside capital. Residents who had shut themselves inside their homes Friday morning, turning Libreville into a ghost town, began emerging as shops and markets reopened. Traffic again clogged the pitted streets, rumbling past a few shops whose shelves had been emptied by looters.
"Life is returning to normal and people are starting to go out again," said Sydney Koumba, a law student in northern Libreville. "We're even seeing traffic jams again."
Speaking Friday in Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France's 1,000 soldiers based in Gabon were on alert and that contingency plans have been drawn up to evacuate the 10,000 French nationals living in Gabon if needed.
Frank Ndjimbi, the spokesman for opposition candidate Pierre Mamboundou, said his boss and other opposition leaders were in hiding because they believed the government was trying to kill them. Ndjimbi said opposition-appointed members of the electoral commission had reported Wednesday night, hours before Bongo was declared the winner, that the ruling party planned to try to submit false electoral results.
Ali Bongo, 50, told France's Le Monde newspaper that "politicians should be careful with their words and act calmly." He said that opposition leaders that want to contest the results could do so "through the proper channels." Ndjimbi said there is no point in doing so because the constitutional court and 40-member electoral commission are stacked with appointees of the late dictator Omar Bongo.
Louis-Gaston Mayila, head of a political party that supported Mamboundou, called the vote "an electoral farce" and claimed Mamboundou had won. But Mayila also called for calm.
"We can't burn our own country because an election was stolen," Mayila said on France-Inter radio.
Sunday's special ballot was called after Omar Bongo, who ruled this African nation for 41 years, died in June. The disputed poll has stoked fears the country of 1.5 million people will destabilize.
Omar Bongo's family amassed a fortune from the country's oil wealth, owning 45 homes in France and more than a dozen luxury cars, including a Bugatti worth $1.5 million which was paid for with a check from the Gabonese treasury. Meanwhile, a third of Gabon's citizens lived in wretched poverty, some digging through garbage dumps for food.
Opposition supporters, aghast that the Bongo family's grip on the country would continue into a fifth decade, turned their wrath Thursday on France, widely suspected of having propped up the dictator and meddling in the elections. France's minister for cooperation, Alain Joyandet, denied the French government meddled in the election.
On Thursday, Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou announced that Bongo, the country's defense minister who campaigned from a private jet and plastered the capital with billboards, won with 41.7 percent of the vote. The top two opposition leaders — Andre Mba Obame and Mamboundou — got 25.8 and 25.2 percent of the vote respectively, Ndongou said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for calm Thursday and urged the candidates and their supporters to resolve grievances "through legal and institutional channels," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said international observers "had noted some irregularities" but said Washington had made no call on whether the vote was fair.
Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi and Todd Pitman in Dakar, Senegal, Cecile Brisson in Paris, Matthew Lee in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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