How The 2025 Presidential Election In Gabon Was Rigged Before The Voting Day, Which Was June 12

How Can It Be Explained That The Candidates Of All Opposition Political Parties, Were Disqualified!

The PDG Of The Bongos, That Was Overthrown on August 30, 2023, Did Not Also Participate In The Election

How Can It Be Explained That In A Country With Over 105 Political Parties, 7 Out Of The 8 Candidates In The Presidential Election, Were ‘Independent Candidates’!

Though the 2025 presidential election in Gabon had its positive side like transparency that was observed at the polling stations on voting day, including the vote counting exercise, the posting of PVs at polling stations, and the official declaration of the result trend less than 24 hours after voting ended, there was unfortunately a very negative side of what happened in the electoral process.

Though the general tendency in elections is that many people tend to focus only on what happened on voting days, an election is not only the voting day. An election is a process – the electoral process.  It is a process that starts from voters’ registration to the voting day, culminating in the official proclamation of the official results.  The credibility of an election is thus assessed not only based on what happens on the voting day, but on what happen throughout the electoral process.  When one of the major stages in the electoral process is heavily flawed, the credibility of the election is called to question.

It should be noted that The Mentor News monitored the 2025 presidential election in Gabon from one stage to the other, and published a number of articles on what happened at the different stages. So we monitored or covered the entire electoral process up to this point, and not just what happened on the voting day.

The Publication Of Candidacies

Though all looked so well on the voting day of the presidential election in Gabon which was on June 12, 2025, the fact was that the election was heavily rigged by the Electoral Commission and the Constitutional Court in Gabon, in favour of the candidacy of the President of the Transitional Government, Brigadier General Clotaire Brice Ollgui Nguema, before the voting day. The election rigging took place at the stage where the files of candidates were examined, ending with the publication of the candidacies validated to participate in the election.

To begin with, he President of Transitional Government, General Oligui Nguema, was not supposed to be a candidate in the June 12, 2025 Presidential Election. In democracy, it is not normal for  the President of a transitional military government to turn around and also be a presidential candidate  in the presidential election to be organized by the transitional government to hand over power to civilian rule.  To put it short, in democracy, the President of a transitional government is not supposed to a candidate in the presidential election.

More so when General Oligui Nguema came to power as President of the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (the transitional government), after the August 30, 2023 military coup in Gabon, he promised the Gabonese people that the military would hand back power to a civilian rule in two years.  But then at the end of the day he did not respect that promise, because he turned around and declared his candidacy for the presidential election, claiming that he had resigned from the military and has become a civilian. Hmmmmmm!

While Bongos’ PDG Did Not Put Up A Candidate, All Major Opposition Patties Did

The type of mafia that happened in the 2025 presidential election in Gabon, was in fact a ‘jamais vu” (unprecedented or never seen) in elections in Francophone Africa, generally notorious for badly organized presidential elections. A presidential election where all the candidates of opposition parties are disqualified! Terrible!

In Gabon, the national dialogue  had recommended that the  ‘Parti Democratic Gabonese’, PDG  (The Gabonese Democratic Party)  of  the Bongo family, that took the country hostage for over 50 years,  and that was overthrown with the Government of Ali Bongo on August 30, 2023, should be suspended from participating in elections for three years. That was a welcomed sanction by the Gabonese people. The assumption then was that the next civilian President of Gabon would finally come from the opposition. And in fact the PDG did not put up a candidate for the 2025 presidential election.

On the other hand, all major opposition parties in Gabon put up candidates for the 2025 presidential election.  It should be noted that the new Constitution of Gabon which put the maximum age limit of a presidential election in the country at 70 years, technically knocked out the chief opposition leader in the country, Prof Albert Ondo Ossa, who was the presumed winner of the August 26, 2023 presidential election in Gabon.  It should also be noted that the Electoral Commission in Gabon received a total of 23 files of candidacies for 2025 presidential elections

Total Of 8 Candidacies Validated For The Presidential Election

As aforementioned rigging at the 2025 Presidential Election in Gabon, took place before the voting day, precisely at the level examination of the files of candidates and publication of candidacies by the Electoral Commission in Gabon, as well as at the level of the examination of petitions by the Constitutional Court in Gabon.

The Electoral Commission for the April 12, 2025 Presidential Election in Gabon retained only 4 out of the 23 candidates that deposited their files for the presidential election, to effectively participate in the election. This meant that the files of 19 candidates were rejected. Without any surprise, the four candidates that had the visa of the Electoral Commission, to participate in the April 12 presidential election, included the President of the Committee for Transition and the Restoration of Institutions in Gabon, Brigadier General Brice, Clotaire Oligu Nguema, who had declared that he would as an independent candidate. The three other candidates were Alain Claude Bilie By – Ndze (a former Prime Minister under Ali Bongo), Stephane Germain Iloko (a medical doctor), and Joseph Lapensee Essingone (of the finance sector).

The 19 candidates that were dropped by the Electoral Commission filed appeals to the Constitutional Court of Gabon, against the decision of the Electoral Commission.

The Constitutional Court after ‘examining’ the petitions validated four more candidacies. The four presidential candidates added by the decision of the Constitutional Court, were:  Alain Simplice Boungoueres, Madam Chaning Zenaba Gninga, Alex Stephene Ibinga Ibinga, and Thierry Yvon Michel N’goma. This brought to eight the total number of candidates for the April 12, 2025 presidential election in Gabon.

All Candidates Of Opposition Parties, Were Scandalous Dropped

 But the curious or even strange thing, about the candidates authorized to participate in the April 12 presidential election in Gabon, was that as many as 7 of the 8 were independent candidates. This was probably because the President of the Transitional Government, General Oligui Nguema, was an independent candidate. The only candidate that ran on the ticket of a political party was Alain Simplice Boungoueres of “Mouvement des Citoyen Gabonais’, which is an unknown party in Gabon that counts over 105 political parties.   THUS CURIOUSLY, STRANGELY AND SCANDALOUSLY ENOUGH, THE CANDIDATES OF ALL THE MAJOR OPPOSTION PARTIES WERE DISQUALIFIED FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RACE, BY THE ELECTOTAL COMMISSION AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT.  It should be noted the members of these institutions, especially those at the top, were all appointed by the President of the Transitional Government, General Oligui Ngue.

Meanwhile when France 24 confronted the President of the Transitional Government, General Oligui Nguema, on this scandal, he claimed that the candidates that were disqualified from the presidential election did not respect the Law, but without giving details.  So all of a sudden, political parties that had been participating in presidential elections in Gabon over the year, did not know how to compile the documents of their candidates, while independent candidates, most were novice in politics, were those who know what to do. Hmmmmmmm!