Category: Politics

{Gabonese opposition leader Jean Ping has said a constitution court ruling which upheld President Ali Bongo’s election victory was “unjust”.}

Mr Ping called for his supporters to “remain vigilant and mobilised”.There have been concerns about violent protests following the court ruling.

To ease tension Mr Bongo offered to include opposition members in his cabinet.
He came to power in 2009 when his father died after ruling for 42 years.

President Bongo says he is now seeking to form a new government.

{{“Respect” for Gabonese}}

Speaking to supporters in the capital Libreville, Mr Ping sought to ensure supporters that the Gabonese people would be “respected” and that “2016 will not be 2009”.

Mr Ping had asked the court to re-examine results in the Haut-Ogooue province where Mr Bongo won 95% of the vote on a turnout of 99.9%

But the court threw out copies of tally sheets that Mr Ping had presented as evidence, saying they had not been verified.

Mr Ping had warned that Gabon could face serious instability if the court rejected his appeal for a recount in that province.

Jean Ping appears to be in no mood to back down.

The opposition leader said the constitutional court was biased. But he’s not the only one to criticise the electoral process: the European Union says the Gabonese have the right to question the election’s integrity.

So far there has been no protests.

This time round the security forces have been very evident on the streets of the capital Libreville and elsewhere, and most people seem to be staying indoors.

In an interview with Reuters on Saturday Mr Bongo called for political dialogue.

“I look forward to inviting members of all political parties to join our efforts and come with us to the cabinet.

“We don’t need international mediation. Among Gabonese, we know how to talk to each other.”

The government has said it would hold opposition leader Jean Ping responsible if clashes erupted following the ruling.

President Bongo won August’s election by just 6,000 votes but the opposition says the poll was rigged. Election results on 27 August sparked days of deadly violence.

Correspondents say residents of Libreville were stockpiling food ahead of the court ruling. There were long queues at banks and supermarkets on Friday and the French embassy told its citizens to stay indoors.

The court partially changed the results of the bitterly-fought election, cancelling votes from 21 stations over irregularities. This boosted President Bongo margin of victory from 49.85% to 50.66%.

Mr Ping won 47.24% of the vote.

{South Sudan’s new first vice president sent contradictory messages in New York on Friday concerning his government’s willingness to accept deployment of a 4,000-strong Regional Protection Force.}

Vice President Taban Deng offered assurance in an address to the United Nations General Assembly that South Sudan “has consented” to a Security Council resolution calling for the dispatch of the additional troops to Juba.

“My government’s position is that we have to engage more with the UN on the details pertaining to the implementation of this resolution,” Mr Deng said.

“This is in order to avoid derailing national healing and reconciliation. External intervention often affects negatively internal reconciliation.”

But in an interview earlier on Friday with the Associated Press, Mr Deng appeared to reject deployment of the force that is intended to consist of soldiers from African countries.

“I don’t think South Sudan needs peacekeeping,” the first vice president told the news agency, adding that his country is “not a dumping place” for peacekeepers “who really can’t help”.

“We already have 13,000 UN troops in South Sudan who are sitting idle, not doing anything because there’s a problem with their mandate, and there’s also a problem with how they were selected,” Mr Deng said.

The UN Mission in South Sudan administers camps at various locations around the country where it is protecting more than 200,000 civilians who have fled their homes due to fighting that broke out nearly three years ago.

Monitors have blamed government forces for attacks on the protection sites and for obstruction of UN aid operations.

Speaking to reporters on Friday evening in New York, UN peacekeeping chief Hevre Ladsous said, in response to Mr Deng’s reported comments, “We heard different statements [from South Sudan officials] and this is another one.”

“When you agree to something,” Mr Ladsous added, “you have to live up to your promises”.

CAUSE OF VIOLENCE

He said there is no sign of South Sudanese cooperation with the effort to augment the peacekeeping force — a move endorsed by the East African leaders as well as by the African Union.

Mr Ladsous joined UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson in suggesting on Friday that stabilising South Sudan will likely require the participation of former First Vice President Riek Machar.

He fled South Sudan in August after fierce clashes in Juba between government troops and Dr Machar’s armed opposition.

Some components of the rebel force then named Mr Deng as the replacement for Dr Machar in the transitional government’s number-two post.

But Dr Machar “is not dead politically”, UN peacekeeping head Ladsous declared on Friday.

“He is out of the country but he does represent a very important element of the South Sudan community.”

Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson said earlier in the day at a multilateral meeting on South Sudan that ongoing violence in the country is being fuelled by “the marginalisation of Riek Machar and his supporters, the sidelining of other opposition groups, both armed and unarmed, and the continued implementation of the 28-states order”.

The UN’s second-in-command was referring to South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s decree last December increasing the number of states from 10 to 28.

The armed opposition reacted negatively to that move, warning that it would exacerbate tribal divisions.

Both Mr Eliasson and Mr Ladsous called on the South Sudan government to take a more inclusive approach in talks on ending a conflict that has taken tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than two million civilians.

First Vice President Deng, on his part, charged in his speech to the General Assembly that Dr Machar had triggered the fighting in Juba two months ago that undermined a peace agreement reached last year.

Mr Deng told the Associated Press that Dr Machar is welcome to return to the country.

“He’s [a] South Sudanese; he can decide to come to Juba anytime.”

IN CONTROL

However, Dr Machar has said that he does not feel safe to return until the Regional Protection Force is deployed.

Mr Deng also assured the General Assembly that South Sudan is now “stable, peaceful and that my government is functioning and life is returning back to normal”.

That depiction contrasts starkly with Mr Eliasson’s summary of the multilateral meeting on South Sudan that included representatives from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, the African Union, the European Union and three of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

“They expressed great concern about the current political and security trends and the deteriorating humanitarian and protection environment in the country,” Mr Eliasson reported.

“They were unanimous in their alarm over the unspeakable toll the current conflict has taken on civilians, with more than 6.1 million people — one half of the South Sudanese population — in need of humanitarian assistance and the continuation of abominable human rights violations, including on ethnic grounds.”

{Gabon’s constitutional court has upheld President’s Ali Bongo’s re-election victory, rejecting an appeal by rival Jean Ping, who had called for a recount over widespread allegations of fraud.}

The court, while partially changing the results of the close August 27 vote, said Bongo maintained a lead over his former ally-turned-opponent Ping.

At a televised public hearing overnight in Libreville, in an almost empty room, the court said Bongo had taken 50.66 per cent of the vote against 47.24 per cent for Ping.

The announcement of Bongo’s victory after the bitterly fought election had sparked days of deadly violence.

In his first comments after the ruling, Bongo, 57, appealed for “political dialogue” with the opposition to steer the country out of the crisis triggered by the announcement of his victory.

“I call all political leaders, including the defeated candidates in the August 27 election, for a political dialogue,” Bongo said in a speech broadcast on television.

In his legal challenge, Ping had asked for a recount in the Bongo family stronghold of Haut-Ogooue province, where the president won more than 95 percent of the votes and turnout was declared to be more than 99 per cent.

EU observers have said there was a “clear anomaly” in those results.

“No one can dispute the fact that Jean Ping has roundly won this election,” his spokesman Jean Gaspard Ntoutoume Ayi told AFP after the court announcement, adding that Ping would make a statement on Saturday morning.

Ping, 73, a career diplomat and a former top official at the African Union, had been hoping to end the Bongo family’s 50-year grip on power in the oil-rich country of 1.8 million people.

The streets of Libreville were empty ahead of the ruling, with residents fearing a new bout of bloodshed.

With the country in political limbo for nearly a month, concern had been growing that a ruling in favour of Bongo could spark a fresh wave of opposition protests.

Across Libreville, the atmosphere was on a knife-edge with riot police deployed at key junctions in order to head off any more unrest.

‘JUDGEMENT DAY’

Along Libreville’s seafront, trucks carrying paratroopers and soldiers, their weapons at the ready, rumbled alongside cars, shared taxis and armoured vehicles on a road that passes both the court and the presidential palace.

Officers in riot gear had begun fanning out through the city on Thursday, and by Friday morning, long queues could be seen outside banks and cash machines.

“Everyone is panicking, everyone is afraid,” explained Jean Rodrigue Boukoumou, a teacher who like many others was waiting to withdraw his money to stock up on food.

“We want to withdraw our money to be able to buy provisions. We have families to feed if the country descends into chaos,” he told AFP, expressing a widely held fear.

“Judgement day” blared the headline in one newspaper, while another front page led with: “The hour of the last judgement is upon us.”

“Until the results are announced, you are requested to avoid going anywhere until further notice,” the French embassy said on its website in a notice to its 10,000-strong community in the country.

Ping had warned the country could face serious instability if the court rejected his appeal for a recount.

But the government has warned Ping that he would be held responsible if fresh violence breaks out, and could find himself arrested if he crosses “the red line”.

Ping has made clear he believes Bongo has the court in his pocket, referring to it as “the Tower of Pisa that always leans the same way”.

The nation erupted in protest after Bongo was declared the winner following an election mired in allegations of fraud.

During the ensuing chaos, demonstrators set fire to the parliament and clashed violently with police, who arrested around 1,000 people.

Opposition figures say “more than 50” people were killed in the violence, but the government gave a figure of three dead.