Rédaction Africa Links 24 with La Rédaction
Published on 2024-03-11 10:48:29
By ousting Ali Bongo for incompetence after staunchly supporting him, the PDG admits its state lies and confesses to high treason against the Gabonese people. As calls for justice mount, the party now in dire straits must reinvent itself to remain credible. This is a major challenge for Paul Biyoghe Mba, called in for assistance. Will the PDG manage to bounce back or is it headed for downfall? The next few months will be crucial for the former ruling party.
Removing him from the highest judicial office on August 30, 2023, following what is called a “coup for freedom,” the new strongmen of Gabon cited, among other reasons, Ali Bongo Ondimba’s incapacity to lead the country, weakened by illness after a debilitating stroke in 2018.
These same reasons were used by the hierarchs of his own party (political bureau and ‘elders’) to relieve him of his duties as Distinguished Comrade President (DCP) and to soon seek a leader capable of instilling the desired leadership and reclaiming lost spaces and power.
Returning to clarity
Coming from the barons of the Gabonese Democratic Party, this rather lucid interpretation is surprising as well as striking, when one recalls the zeal and energy they all displayed during the last presidential election – pre-campaign and campaign – to demonstrate against all odds that Ali Bongo Ondimba was fully capable physically and intellectually, “the weapon of the present and the future,” the only one capable of leading Gabon’s destiny with flair.
Despite warnings from all sides (from within the country, as well as from friends of Gabon abroad) about the president’s physical weaknesses and severe intellectual fatigue regularly displayed by the ousted president, the PDG bigwigs often turned a deaf ear, also putting blinders on to avoid acknowledging the obvious need to turn the page on a chaotic Ali Bongo Ondimba’s rule after 14 years of erratic governance.
High treason
Even more serious, the leaders of the former ruling party have publicly admitted the president Ali Bongo’s incompetence to lead, highlighting a long-maintained lie to the Gabonese people. This confession questions the legitimacy of his final governments and raises calls for justice, for high treason against the politicians involved in concealing the president’s true health condition.
To think that, in this ostrich policy, along with the PDG barons, advocates of the “Ali candidate or nothing” concept, sworn doctors had also indulged in it.
Indeed, at that precise moment, if there were any ‘elders’ of the PDG found, they should have had the courage to admit that Ali Bongo Ondimba was no longer the man for the job. Such an attitude would have certainly given the PDG a second lease on life, a breath of fresh air and splendor. The former ruling party would have then chosen another standard bearer in the last presidential election.
The charm of this approach would lie in the novelty, presenting the Gabonese people with a candidate other than a Bongo, whose name had clearly become saturated after a cumulative 56 years of unchallenged rule, father and son.
Today, with the harm done and the PDG in the dock, the sudden return to lucidity of its gray eminences is ridiculed in public opinion, which does not hesitate to label it as a case of too little, too late.
Reminder
With a little perspective and common sense, we remember at the beginning of Ali Bongo’s second seven years, the rise of Alexandre Barro Chambrier and his comrades from the Heritage and Modernity movement, who opportunistically alerted about the drifts of a leader and a regime that could lead the party and the country to the edge if vigorous actions were not taken within the Gabonese Democratic Party.
Chambrier and his “bitter” band – the epithet had fallen out of favor – were quickly opposed by another movement, the Movement for Ali Bongo Ondimba (Mogabo), which emerged with arguments of a Gabon firmly on the path to emergence, a regenerating PDG, and a DCP at the helm. Move on, there’s nothing to see!
But as paradoxical as it may seem, it is quite curious to recognize among the well-thinking heads of the PDG’s last mass, which pronounced Ali Bongo’s downfall, the supporters of this dubious Mogabo.
Irony of history and mission impossible?
To save Ali Bongo Ondimba and the Gabonese Democratic Party from sinking, Paul Biyoghe Mba has been called back for assistance.
However, it is worth remembering the “humiliating” manner, to say the least, in which this campaigner and old hand, inspirer of the highest turnover in the Gabonese administration in favor of his close associates, was ejected from the premiership by the Distinguished Comrade President.
The ‘Tortoise’ of Bikele – as he likes to be called – thus has the mission of reviving and revitalizing a drifting political formation, cut off from its various sources of financing due to the incestuous links it had with the State, to the extent that it always equated its treasurize with the public treasury.
The public is therefore interested to see the therapy that he and his comrades in the interim bodies will apply to re-energize the troops as more and more former “comrades” abandon ship every day in successive waves. At the same time, many former allied parties are reasserting their autonomy, denouncing agreements and mergers that were known to be deceitful deals.
Biyoghe Mba and the PDG will have the daunting task of reconquering the hearts of the Gabonese people, weary of 56 years of power marked by waste, nepotism, and disconcerting amateurism. They will also need to choose, in the short and medium term, a president, a charismatic leader, endowed with all the trappings – especially the “nerve of war” – capable of rallying and preparing the “troops” for battle.
With this profile in mind, we will see what color the smoke will be that comes out of the “Sistine Chapel” during the grand mass of the next PDG congress. Perhaps the former ruling party will seek out the rare bird among the current holders of power? It is not certain. But it will most likely not be the transitional president, who has already stated that he is not a member of the Gabonese Democratic Party, military and all-general that he is.
The future will decide!
Ancient Barack
Related Articles
Read the original article(French) on Gabon Review
