Gabon’s Coup Leader Oligui Nguema Wins the Presidential Elections
Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, President of the Transition and candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, gestures during his closing campaign in Libreville, Gabon, 10 April 2025 (issued 11 April 2025). Gabonese citizens head to the polls to choose a new president on 12 April among eight candidates, more than 19 months after Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema ousted Omar Bogon in a bloodless coup. Photo: EFE/EPA/CHRIS DARCEL
April 13, 2025 Hour: 2:12 pm
The transitional president and leader of Gabon’s military junta, Brigadier General Brice Oligui Nguema, won the presidential elections held on Saturday by a resounding majority, according to provisional results released this Sunday by the Gabonese Ministry of the Interior.
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According to the results announced at a press conference in the capital, Libreville, by the Minister of the Interior, Hermann Immongault, Nguema won the elections with 90.35% of the votes.
Far behind was his main rival in the vote, former Prime Minister Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, second with 3.02% of the vote, while the other six candidates did not exceed 1%.
These results must now be confirmed in the coming days by the Constitutional Court, to which possible appeals must also be submitted.
“Now we must turn the page on the presidential elections. Tomorrow is a working day and we must return to work to build Gabon,” Nguema declared after learning the results at his campaign headquarters in Libreville, surrounded by his supporters.
Slightly more than 920,000 voters, out of a total population of about 2.5 million people, were called to vote in some 3,000 polling stations in the nine provinces of this central African country, as well as in embassies and consulates of nearly 30 African nations, European and Asian.
The election day in Gabon was characterized by a high citizen participation, reaching 70.04% according to the Ministry of the Interior, surpassing the percentage of the controversial previous elections, so the voting hours were extended in several centers of the capital.
In Gabon, the military seized power and overthrew President Ali Bongo after the April 2023 elections, claiming lack of transparency, ending the family dynasty that had ruled since 1967.
Autor: ACJ
Fuente: EFE