Gabon’s opposition platform, Alternance 2023, urged the military junta Thursday to continue counting votes from the presidential election.
The main opposition alliance supporting Albert Ondo Ossa encouraged the junta to bring the electoral process to a conclusion by completing the ballot count.
Ossa was unsuccessful in the election, gaining more than 30% of the vote against incumbent Ali Bongo Odimba, who won a third term with 64% of votes.
The election and results were annulled Wednesday by a group of military officers who took power and called themselves the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (CTRI).
This gesture of strength “spared” Gabon and its people “an electoral crisis whose economic, social and above all human consequences would have been even more serious,” Alternance 2023 said at a news conference.
It insisted on the victory of Ossa, who is the former education minister under Omar Bongo Odimba — the father of the president who died in 2009 after 40 years in power.
“Professor Albert Ondo Ossa is Gabonese people’s choice, it’s indisputable, and no one disputes it. We cannot ask the Gabonese people, who massively elected professor Albert Ondo Ossa, to renounce this choice. This is unacceptable and the people will not accept it,” said Alternance 2023.
The opposition urged the junta to choose “the path of democracy and the rule of law to enable the country to rebuild itself and be spared an even more serious crisis” with the risk of isolation from the international community, sanctions from financial institutions and development partners who would be obliged to put an end to all cooperation if the country “chose to depart from republican legality,” it said, as it urged the junta to “measure the consequences” for the lives of the population.
Alternance 2023 would be obliged to put an end to all cooperation if the country “chose to depart from republican legality,” it said, as it urged the junta to “measure the consequences” for the lives of the population.
The statement came after the announcement that Brice Oligui Nguema, Commander of the Republican Guard and leader of the junta, will be sworn in Sept. 4 as president of the transition.
Ossa’s bloc also urged defense and security forces to show responsibility, patriotism and to find a way for discussions “to avoid an even darker future for the country.”