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Fanny Pigeaud is a French journalist who works with Mediapart and Le Monde diplomatique, amongst other outlets. She is co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of A Decade of Cameroon. Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist. He has previously worked as a technical advisor at the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal, and is the Africa Director of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). He is the co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of The Fair Trade Scandal.

The issue #191 of The Internationalist we feature from their latest book, French Neocolonialism in Africa. Here they explain how French officials and elites briefly backed opposition candidate Jean Ping against Gabon's Ali Bongo in 2016—driven largely by French business grievances over Bongo's diversification of economic partners—but quickly backed down once it became clear Bongo had retained control and could not be unseated.

The French authorities are occasionally forced to change their tune in response to events. This was the case with regard to Gabon in 2016. Speaking on a TV programme that January, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, appointed by the Socialist President Hollande, suggested that Ali Bongo Ondimba had not been elected in 2009 under normal conditions – or in Valls’s words, ‘not as we understand it’. His comments echoed those made by the Socialist Party in 2009, according to which the election, ‘organised in a somewhat hasty manner’ had not produced ‘a clear and indisputable result’. But such remarks were controversial coming from a sitting head of government.

Seven months later, the French leadership adopted an even more unusual stance during the presidential battle between the incumbent president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, and main opposition candidate, Jean Ping, who was an influential former minister (serving under Omar Bongo Ondimba) and former president of the African Union Commission (2008-12). While the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (CENAP) was still counting the results of the election held on 26 August and the two main candidates were each claiming victory, on the evening of 28 August France’s Socialist Party took sides with Ping. In a communiqué entitled ‘Presidential election in Gabon: The Socialist Party hopes that democracy will prevail’, it stated:

"While initial estimates indicate that outgoing President Ali Bongo has been defeated by Jean Ping, calm must prevail at the end of the election. … The Bongo family has ruled Gabon for more than half a century. A change of government would be a sign of a healthy democracy and set an example."

This position caused consternation among Gabon’s ruling elite. The Gabonese state daily L’Union denounced it as ‘a scandalous and delusional intervention in Gabon’s internal affairs’. ‘We do not and will not accept being treated like a colony’, protested an adviser to President Bongo. The French Socialists’ stance was seen by many as rejecting the thinking of the French presidency. The next day, with the results still unpublished, former Socialist Jean-Marie Bockel, senator for the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) and former Secretary of State for Cooperation and the Francophonie, highlighted his ‘friendship’ with Ping. This produced a strange mix of genres: ‘Jean Ping has won the presidential election in Gabon. … In these decisive hours for the future of Gabon, I want to assure my friend Jean Ping of my active solidarity.’ MP Jean-François Mancel, who had a few years earlier supported Denis Sassou Nguesso, also spoke of ‘Jean Ping’s victory’.

On 31 August, the results were announced, giving Ali Bongo Ondimba a narrow victory. The outgoing president was credited with 49.80 per cent of the votes cast, against 48.23 per cent for Ping, a difference of only 5,594 votes. The opposition contested the results, accusing the government of fraud in the province of Haut-Ogooué, the presidential clan’s fief, where Ali Bongo Ondimba won 95.46 per cent of the votes on a 99.93 per cent turnout. Only 47 people officially abstained. But according to reports provided by the opposition, there were in fact more than 10,000 abstentions. As in 2009, opposition supporters, dreaming of a change of government after almost 50 years of the Bongo family’s rule and plundering of national resources, protested in the streets. This prompted a post-election crisis that would claim at least three lives.

The Élysée called for calm – but also supported Ping’s request for a recount to be held voting-bureau by voting-bureau, citing the need for a ‘process that guarantees transparency’. ‘It is obvious that Ping won, even if everyone cheated’, a French official source told Le Monde, anonymously. Another source confirmed: ‘The province of Haut-Ogooué was obviously used to make up for Ali Bongo Ondimba’s shortfall in the other provinces.’ In an interview with the public TV channel France 2, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, Jean-Marc Ayrault, appeared embarrassed, juggling the idea of ensuring respect for the ‘law’ and that of avoiding interference. As he put it, the days of ‘Françafrique are behind us’:

"We do not want to interfere in the internal affairs of countries under any circumstances. That would be disrespectful to Africans, they are not asking us to do so. Simply, when they express themselves, they ask us to uphold the law, to recall its principles, and that is what we are doing."

While Sarkozy, who had supported Ali Bongo Ondimba seven years earlier, remained silent, almost the entire French political class took Ping’s side. ‘The feeling we get from listening to observers on the ground is that President Bongo did not win this election’, said François Fillon, Nicolas Sarkozy’s former prime minister, on 2 September.

But what had got into these French elites? Why were they so critical, when most of them did not protest during the previous Gabonese presidential election or during the contested re-election of Denis Sassou Nguesso in neighbouring Congo a few months earlier, in March 2016, or faced with Idriss Déby Itno’s retention of power in Chad in April 2016? Why were French authorities suddenly so concerned about ‘transparency’?

To find some hints of an answer, we would do well to consider the economic interests involved. During his presidency, Ali Bongo Ondimba had diversified his country’s economic partnerships, and this was poorly received by French business circles. The Gabonese state had major tensions with the Bolloré group, accused of failing to make good on its promised investments, as well as with oil giant Total, which was hit with a heavy tax adjustment. ‘This adjustment was perfectly legal, but until then it had been unimag- inable that the law would apply to Total’, explains a senior Gabonese official. Franco-Gabonese diplomatic relations were also strained. Ali Bongo Ondimba’s chief of staff was briefly arrested in France, and the Gabonese president took a dim view of this. ‘They wanted to humiliate Gabon’, he said from the steps of the Élysée Palace in September 2015.

Ping well understood the problem, as seen from France. ‘One of my beliefs is that Ali Bongo does not defend France’s interests. And I think everyone is convinced of that’, he told Le Monde in March 2016, suggesting that he was ready to do better. Another significant sign is that Robert Bourgi now openly supports Ping. The controversial lawyer has even ‘leaned with all his force on the other opposition candidates to rally behind Jean Ping. The latter has become the more than official Françafrique candidate.’

However, as the weeks went by, the Gabonese opposition became less and less active. It was clear that Ali Bongo Ondimba had retained control. The French support for Ping had begun to wane. In November, Jean-Marie Bockel was virtually the only one lee to challenge the government. ‘While it is not our place to arbitrate an internal political conflict in an independent state, France cannot remain passive in the face of such a denial of democracy’, he protested. French Foreign Minister Ayrault’s response was less ambiguous than the statements he had made a few weeks earlier: ‘France did not have to choose between one candidate or the other. Throughout the process, we were attentive to ensuring the integrity of the election and to resolving the dispute over the results through legal channels.’ He added: ‘Relations between France and its African partners must be based on clarity, friendship and solidarity, but also on respect for the integrity and independence of each of these countries.’ This statement was clearly an admission of defeat. Paris and the interests disturbed by Ali Bongo Ondimba had failed. They thus resigned themselves to keeping him as their main interlocutor. In the mean- time, they are no doubt impatiently waiting for the next election.

Excerpted with permission from French Neocolonialism in Africa: A History of Electoral Imperialism By Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla, translated by David Broder. Published by Pluto Books.

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