In this September 1, 2016 photo, Gabonese police stand guard on a barricade following an election protest in Libreville, Gabon.
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Ping has previously described the election as fraudulent and has demanded a recount – a call echoed by Manuel Valls, prime minister of Gabon’s former colonial power, France. A European Union observer mission said it found anomalies in the result.
The poll and its violent aftermath – at least six people have died in riots – have drawn global attention to Gabon, which counts Total and Royal Dutch Shell PLC among foreign investors.
Reacting to the criticism, Mr Bongo, 57, told France’s RTL radio: “I would also have liked them to have noted some anomalies in the fiefdom of Mr Ping”. I can not violate the law.
A defiant Bongo ruled out any new tally unless the Constitutional Court ordered one.
France has intervened in its former African colonies in the past but has ruled out intervention in Gabon, which has been run by the Bongo family for half a century. He said he was preparing his own objections.
Bongo said in the Europe1 interview that he won’t ask for the votes to be recounted.
“The constitutional court is the Bongo family”.
“We have mountains of evidence of tampering from neighboring countries” to help Ping “steal the election”, Moussa-Adamo said.
Official results from Haut-Ogooue showed a participation rate more than double that of other regions and with 95.46 percent of voters backing Bongo.
Election crisis mediators from the African Union (AU) have postponed their trip to Gabon, which was slated for Friday, to a later time in the future. The United Nations, which will send a representative to attend the process, is encouraging the opposition to file an appeal with the constitutional court.
Reports say Chad’s President Idriss Deby, who heads the delegation and had just returned from a G20 summit in China, was suffering from fatigue and was not able to make the trip.
“We have the impression that the observer mission wanted to become a control mission”, he said.
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Mr Bongo accused Mr Ping, a former African Union Commission chairman, of attempting “massive fraud” and said it was hard to envisage dialogue with “people who ask the Gabonese to go into the street to loot and destroy and burn things”.
