Gabon’s top opposition candidate, Jean Ping, declared Friday that he was the rightful victor of the election, calling the results for the August 27 vote fraudulent following President Ali Bongo Ondimba’s re-election.
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The final query data from 27 last August were 49.8 percent of the votes for Ali Bongo and 48.23 percent of ballots for his challenger, Jean Ping, who denounced the alleged existence of fraud elections.
Speaking on France’s Europe 1 radio station, Bongo said that criticism by European Union observers against the voting process in Gabon is “biased”.
LIBREVILLE – The AU is to send a delegation to Gabon to help resolve a post-election standoff between President Ali Bongo, whose family has ruled for a half century, and his main opposition rival. Countries including the USA and France have called on Gabon’s government to publish results by individual polling stations.
Top opposition candidate Jean Ping has declared he is the rightful victor of last month’s vote.
The EU observer commission said in addition to not having full access to all districts within Bongo’s stronghold Haut-Ogooue province, voter turnout there appeared inflated.
News of the re-election of Bongo, whose family has ruled the OPEC member for 50 years, triggering cries of fraud and riots in the capital that claimed at least six lives. Other provinces had a turnout between 45 percent and 71 percent.
With Bongo claiming victory by a wafer-thin margin of some 6,000 votes, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls proposed recounting the ballots.
Worldwide pressure is growing for transparency in the vote results.
“The European observers on the ground (.) have expressed their criticism on the basis of objective facts”, Valls told French radio station RTL.
Chadian President Idriss Deby, current Chairman of the Union, said on Tuesday in Addis Ababa that this move has become imperative because he has continued to follow, with renewed attention, the evolution of the situation in Gabon.
Gabonese authorities, however, say the death toll stands at three, besides 105 wounded, and that some deaths were previously attributed incorrectly to the clashes. “I propose to cease all activity and begin a general strike”, Ping said in a statement on Monday. It also disputes Bongo’s 2009 election victory shortly after the death of his father, Omar Bongo.
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Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.
