FUNDI WA KOMBO

UNREST AS DICTATOR'S SON DECLARED WINNER IN GABON

Gabon's government declared late dictator Omar Bongo's son the winner of presidential elections Thursday, triggering the worst violence in years in the oil-rich nation.
In Gabon's steamy coastal city of Port Gentil, mobs protesting 50-year-old Ali Bongo's electoral victory burned France's consulate, attacked the offices of French oil giant Total and pillaged shops.
Over 41 years, Omar Bongo's family amassed a fortune from the country's oil wealth, owning 45 homes in France and more than a dozen luxury cars including a Bugatti worth $1.5 million. Meanwhile, a third of Gabon's citizens lived in wretched poverty, some digging through garbage dumps for food.
Opposition supporters, feeling Sunday's election was stolen and aghast that the Bongo family would continue to rule, turned their anger on the country's former colonial ruler, France, widely suspected of having propped up the dictator and meddling in the elections.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Gabonese troops helped evacuate people from offices of Total and Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services company.
"We firmly condemn these attacks on public order and we are ready to help French citizens if they need it," Kouchner said. "For the moment, there is no need."
A Polish female Schlumberger field engineer in Port Gentil was seriously hurt during rioting in the city, located 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Libreville, said company spokesman Stephen Whittaker in Paris.
In the capital, Libreville, police fired tear gas at demonstrators, injuring one of the country's main opposition candidates, Pierre Mamboundou, who reportedly went into hiding. The violence was also felt abroad as protesters in Dakar, Senegal, stormed Gabon's embassy and set it ablaze.
The special ballot was called after Omar Bongo's death in June, and many hoped the vote would turn a new page in a nation ruled by one man for the past four decades. Instead, the disputed poll is fueling fears the forested country of 1.5 million people will destabilize.
Still, the unrest is not likely to affect global oil prices, said Leo Drollas, chief economist at the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies, noting Gabon's small petroleum output. According to the U.S. Energy Administration, Gabon produces 247,000 barrels of oil a day, around one-tenth of Nigeria's production.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for calm and urged the candidates and their supporters to resolve grievances "through legal and institutional channels," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said international observers "had noted some irregularities" but said Washington had made no call on whether the vote was fair. He urged all parties to remain calm and "uphold the democratic process."
France's minister for cooperation, Alain Joyandet, denied the French government meddled in the election, challenging critics "to find the slightest proof" of French intervention.
Tensions had been rising for days as Gabon awaited results from Sunday's poll, which were initially expected Wednesday but were delayed because the election commission purportedly disagreed on how to review province-by-province results.
Right before the results were announced, police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of opposition protesters who had camped out overnight in the main square flanking the election commission's office, where they dragged a coffin representing the death of the Bongo regime, which has ruled since 1967, and chanted: "Death to Ali!"
When police descended on them protesters ran, tripping over each other. Some had blood dripping down their arms and faces.
Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou then announced that Ali Bongo, the country's defense minister who campaigned from a private jet and plastered the capital with billboards, won with 41.7 percent of the vote.
The top two opposition leaders — Andre Mba Obame and Mamboundou — were nearly tied, receiving 25.8 and 25.2 percent of the vote respectively, Ndongou said.
Obame owns a TV station which lost its signal on Sunday. The station borrowed equipment to broadcast the election results but before dawn Wednesday, masked men opened fire on the station, damaging its satellite uplink, said station manager Franck Nguema.
The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said journalists have been threatened or beaten and the signals of some TV stations have been cut.
Mamboundou was injured in the arm by police during the violence, said Louis-Gaston Mayila, head of a political party allied to Mamboundou. Mayila said Mamboundou has gone into hiding.
Minister of Communication Laure Gondjout denied Mamboundou was hurt.
Late Wednesday, Mamboundou had called the election "a fraudulent farce" and insisted that results of individual polling stations showed he had around 40 percent of the vote, with Bongo snaring less than 30.
"It's not just a possibility of fraud. It's fraud pure and simple," Mamboundou said. "The Gabonese people do not want a dynasty. Forty-two years of President Bongo is enough. They want change."
After results were announced, protesters in Libreville tried to block roads with burning tires and the shells of old cars but security forces removed the roadblocks. In one neighborhood, they stopped a bus and ordered the passengers to get down, then set fire to it. Elsewhere, protesters pulled down Ali Bongo's posters and stomped on his image.
In Port Gentil, demonstrators also broke down the doors to the prison, liberating the prisoners, said Dianney Madztou, the editor-in-chief of local TV station Top Bendje.
In Dakar, Senegal, plumes of thick black smoke rose from Gabon's embassy after two dozen Gabonese students forced their way into the two-story villa and set it ablaze. The embassy was closed at the time, with only one guard present.
"We want change," said one of the students. "This election is a fraud."