What you should know about Ali Bongo and his family, who controlled Gabon for 56 years.

Omar Bongo, Ali Bongo’s father, ruled Gabon from 1967 to 2009.

Gabonese military personnel seized power and proclaimed the overthrow of President Ali Bongo Ondimba in the early hours of Wednesday, August 30, 2023.

The junta announced that the Central African country is now “on the road to happiness.”

According to the coup plotters, the President is no longer physically or intellectually competent of leading the country.

After serving as the country’s defence minister under his father, Omar Bongo, who controlled the country from 1967 until 2009, Bongo was elected President of Gabon in 2009.

Omar, Gabon’s second president, controlled the country for nearly 42 years before dying in office in 2009.

Before becoming President of Gabon, Omar worked as a young official under Gabon’s first President, Leon M’ba, whom he then deputised after being elected Vice President in 1966.

M’ba died in France in November 1967, and Omar took over as President of the country.

Omar’s regime faced fierce criticism as he ruled the country with an iron fist. Despite the resistance, he won back-to-back elections on the platform of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), which he founded in 1968.

The PDG was the country’s single political party until 1990, when public pressure pushed the president to institute a multi-party system in Gabon politics.

Following his death in a Spanish hospital in 2009, his son, Ali Bongo, who had previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence, was elected as the country’s third president.

Bongo, who joined his father’s party in 1981, became the country’s President at the age of 50.

Bongo, like his father, has won elections since becoming President because Gabon has no term limits. He gained re-election to the presidency for the third time on Saturday, August 26.

Bongo’s presidency was tarnished by corruption, with opposition party members accusing him of impoverishing the country in an interview with Aljazeera.

Gabon is ranked 124th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index.

According to Aljazeera, the Bongo family has been engaged in a number of big scandals, including the recent indictment of five of the president’s siblings in a French probe of embezzlement and public funds laundering.

Bongo had a stroke in 2018 while on an official trip to Saudi Arabia. His bad health then precluded him from doing official duties for several months. Political unrest caused by the president’s incapacity resulted in an attempted coup in 2019.

Despite his incapacity, Bongo ran for re-election in 2019 and was declared the election winner.

Hundreds of thousands of Gabonese have never known a leader other than the Bongo family.