A Gabon isolated from the rest of the world is awaiting the results of the country's general elections held on Saturday, August 26, in which the Bongo family may lose the power they have held since 1967. Weakened by a stroke in 2018, Ali Bongo Ondimba, who succeeded his father in 2009, is seeking a third term in office.

After forbidding international observers from being present and refusing to grant foreign journalists accreditation, the government cut off Internet access as soon as the vote ended and imposed a curfew from 7:00 pm to 6:00 am on Sunday, citing the risk of "spreading calls for violence and false information." Immediately after, broadcasts by RFI, France 24 and TV5 Monde, which have a strong local following, were suspended. They were accused of "lacking objectivity and balance in their coverage of the current elections."

"These decisions are totally unacceptable. There is no justification for them other than to prepare for an electoral coup and the Bongo family, once again, taking the country hostage. The voting took place calmly and without any major incidents, apart from occasional organizational issues due to incompetent electoral institutions" said Georges Mpaga, executive president of the Réseau des organisations libres pour la bonne gouvernance (Network of Free Organizations for Good Governance in Gabon, ROLBG). Some polling stations opened four to six hours after the legal opening time. It was also reported that ballot papers for opposition candidates were nowhere to be found.

Together with the Consortium de la société civile pour la transparence électorale et la démocratie (Civil Society Consortium for Electoral Transparency and Democracy) and the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network, the organization was able to send observers around the country to witness the counting of the single-round ballot to which around 850,000 voters were invited to choose the future president, MPs and mayors.

In a joint statement issued on Monday, August 28, these organizations called for all restrictions to be lifted and for "the thousands of heavily armed soldiers and security forces deployed to intimidate and create a frenzy among the public" to return to their barracks. They are also calling on Ali Bongo to accept "the truth of the ballot box," the first trends of which, according to them, show a clear lead for the opposing candidate. Estimates drawn from the parallel counting of results they carried out on a sample of 1,000 polling stations attribute "68% of the votes cast" to Albert Ondo Ossa, the candidate of the Alternance 2023 platform. The 13 other candidates, including the outgoing president, took the remaining 32%.

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