Clashes after Gabon leader wins re-poll

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo was declared winner a day earlier of contested weekend elections, extending half-a-century of rule by the Bongo family which sparked clashes in the Central African nation.
Protesters shouting “Ali must go!” tried to storm the offices of the election commission shortly after authorities announced his re-election by a narrow majority.
Security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to push several hundred protesters back. Bongo won 49.80 of the vote against 48.23 percent for his rival Jean Ping, or a razor-thin 5,594 votes of a total 627,805 registered voters, Interior Minister Pacome Moubelet-Boubeya.
Bongo, whose father held onto power for four decades, sought relection after winning a first term in 2009 in a poll that was marred by violence.
His rival, half-Chinese ex-diplomat Jean Ping, had also claimed victory, sparking fears of violence and the deployment of anti-riot police around the capital Libreville.
Any appeal by Ping would be likely to focus on disputed results in one of the country’s nine provinces, the Haut-Ogooue, the heartland of Bongo’s Teke ethnic group.
In Saturday’s vote, turnout was 59.46 percent nationwide but soared to 99.93 percent in Haut-Ogooue, where Bongo won 95.5 percent of votes.
“It’s going to be difficult to get people to accept these results,” one member of the electoral commission confided to AFP, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“We’ve never seen results like these, even during the father’s time,” he added.
Opposition delegates in the electoral commission boycotted a vote to approve the results on Wednesday and they have vowed to fight for a recount.

Source: Arab News