2023-08-26 18:03:23
Assessors transport electoral material while Gabonese wait for the opening of their electoral office, in Libreville, Saturday August 26, 2023. STRINGER / REUTERS
The electoral climate is turning stormy in Gabon. While the Gabonese are called to the polls on Saturday August 26, to decide whether or not to entrust a third term to President Ali Bongo Ondimba, the Minister of Communication ordered the internet to be cut off and the establishment of curfew.
In order to avoid “the spread of calls for violence (…) and false information”, “The government has taken the decision to suspend until further notice access to the internet throughout the territory. A curfew throughout the territory has been decreed and will be applied from this Sunday, August 27. It will be in force every day, from 7 p.m. until 6 a.m.Minister Rodrigue Mboumba Bissawou told the public television channel.
In the middle of the followingnoon, Albert Ondo Ossa, Ali Bongo’s most serious rival, behind whom most of the opposition lately lined up, had denounced “orchestrated fraud” by the Bongo camp, and another tenor of the opposition the « chaos » in the organization of the ballot.
Late opening of many polling stations
Mr. Ondo, whose vote was announced for mid-morning in the center of Libreville, was only able to slip his ballot into the ballot box in the middle of the followingnoon, his office remaining closed eight hours following planned opening, assured Agence France-Presse its communications adviser, Guy-Pamphile Mba. Due to late delivery of voting materials, according to Alternance 2023.
Read also: In Gabon, a presidential election tailor-made for Ali Bongo
These elections are taking place in the absence of foreign media, which have been refused accreditation or entry into the country, Reporter sans Frontières (RSF) denounced on Friday, and without international observers, African or European. Fourteen contenders compete, a little less than 850,000 registered voters out of some 2.3 million inhabitants also being called upon to vote for the legislative and municipal elections, all in one ballot.
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