LIBREVILLE, Gabon — Gabon’s government declared late dictator Omar Bongo’s son the winner of presidential elections Thursday, triggering the worst violence in years in the oil-rich nation.
In Gabon’s steamy coastal city of Port-Gentil, mobs protesting 50-year-old Ali Bongo’s electoral victory burned France’s consulate, attacked the offices of French oil giant Total and pillaged shops.
Over 41 years, Omar Bongo amassed a fortune from the country’s oil wealth, owning 45 homes in France and more than a dozen luxury cars including a Bugatti worth $1.5 million. Meanwhile, a third of Gabon’s citizens lived in wretched poverty, some digging through garbage dumps for food.
Opposition supporters, feeling Sunday’s election was stolen and aghast that the Bongo family would continue to rule, turned their anger on the country’s former colonial ruler, France, widely suspected of having propped up the dictator and meddling in the elections.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Gabonese troops helped evacuate people from offices of Total and Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield-services company.
In the capital, Libreville, police fired tear gas at demonstrators, injuring one of the country’s main opposition candidates, Pierre Mamboundou, who reportedly went into hiding. The violence was also felt abroad as protesters in Dakar, Senegal, stormed Gabon’s embassy and set it ablaze.
The special ballot was called after Omar Bongo’s death in June, and many hoped the vote would turn a new page in a nation ruled by one man for the past four decades. Instead, the disputed poll is fueling fears the forested country of 1.5 million people will destabilize.
