A group of senior Gabonese army officers announced on Wednesday that they had seized power and placed President Ali Bongo under house arrest, moments after announcing his re-election for a third term.

In an overnight announcement broadcast on television, a dozen officers declared the results of Saturday's elections null and void, all borders closed until further notice and state institutions dissolved.

They presented themselves as members of a Transition and Institutional Restoration Committee, and claimed to represent all of Gabon's security and defense forces.

It is not known who led the putschists, but Gabonese television broadcast images of a man in fatigues and a green beret being carried in triumph by soldiers chanting "Oligui president", a possible reference to Brice Oligui Nguema, head of the Republican Guard, Ali Bongo's praetorian guard.

Interviewed by Le Monde, Brice Oligui Nguema declared that the generals would meet in the afternoon to designate "the one who will lead the transition".

Ali Bongo is "retired (and) enjoys all his rights", he said.

"He had no right to serve a third term, the Constitution had been flouted, and the election method itself was not good. So the army has decided to turn the page, to take its responsibilities," Brice Oligui Nguema told Le Monde, underlining "the discontent" in the country and "the illness of the head of state", weakened since a stroke in 2018.

In the morning, hundreds of people took to the streets of the capital, Libreville, to celebrate the coup announcement, which appears to have been filmed from the presidential palace.

In another statement later broadcast on television, military officers said they had placed 64-year-old Ali Bongo under house arrest. They also announced the arrest of Ali Bongo's son, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, and others on charges of corruption and treason.

FRENCH PRESENCE

Prior to the celebrations, calm prevailed in the streets of the capital, although gunfire was briefly heard in Libreville shortly after the first televised broadcast. Police have since been deployed to guard the city's main intersections.

If confirmed, this coup could further weaken France's position in Africa, where military juntas have already seized power since 2020 in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and, in July, Niger.

France "condemns the military coup underway in Gabon", declared government spokesman Olivier Véran. "We reiterate our commitment to free and transparent electoral processes", he added.

France, which is facing a wave of anti-French sentiment in the Sahel region, has 350 French soldiers positioned in Gabon, according to the Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Previous coups in Mali and Burkina Faso forced France to withdraw its troops there, while putschists in Niger revoked military agreements with Paris.

DEMOCRATIC SETBACK

The context in Gabon is different from that in Niger and other countries in the Sahel region, where violence by armed Islamists has eroded public confidence in democratically-elected governments.

A coup d'état in this oil-producing Central African country would nevertheless be seen as a further sign of democratic backsliding in an increasingly unstable region.

Ali Bongo has already served two presidential terms after succeeding his father Omar Bongo, who died in 2009 after holding power since 1967.

His detractors accuse him of failing to share the wealth generated by oil production with a population of some 2.3 million, a third of whom live in poverty.

"Today, the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis", declared the coup plotters, claiming that the August 26 elections had lacked transparency and credibility.

"In the name of the Gabonese people, and guarantor of the protection of institutions, we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime", they added.

TENSE CONTEXT

Before the announcement of the officers, tensions were already high in Gabon, where presidential and legislative elections took place on Saturday, marked by allegations of fraud denied by Ali Bongo's entourage.

The absence of international observers, the suspension of some foreign TV channels and the decision by the authorities to cut off internet access and impose a nationwide night-time curfew after the poll have raised concerns about the transparency of the electoral process.

Several hours after the officers' announcement, the internet network appeared to be restored for the first time since Saturday's elections, a Reuters journalist observed.

Earlier, the president of the Gabonese Elections Centre (CGE) announced that Ali Bongo had won a third term in the presidential election with 64.27% of the vote, compared with 30.77% for his main opponent, Albert Ondo Ossa.

In response to the coup attempt, the Eramet mining group announced on Wednesday that it was shutting down its operations in the country, sending its share price down 15% at around 13:20 GMT on the Paris stock exchange.

The TotalEnergies group, which also operates in Gabon, said it was mobilized for the safety of its employees, without specifying the impact on its operations in the country. Subsidiary TotalEnergies EP Gabon was down 11% on the stock market.

(Reported by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome, with contributions from Alessandra Prentice, Sofia Christensen, Sudip Kar Gupta and Liz Lee, edited by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Nellie Peyton and Sofia Christensen; French version by Camille Raynaud, Zhifan Liu and Blandine Hénault, edited by Tangi Salaün, Kate Entringer and Bertrand Boucey)

by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome