Gabon’s president Ali Bongo looked disoriented as he stared into a camera and appealed for international help against the generals who had placed him under house arrest and carried out the latest coup in central and west Africa.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Bongo, 64, said on Wednesday, not long after he had been declared the winner of Saturday’s disputed election. His words could have been uttered by any of the regional leaders who have watched on haplessly as coup after coup has removed them from office.
The generals led by Brice Oligui Nguema, head of the presidential guard, who seized power early on Wednesday went on Gabonese television to annul the election result, dissolve state institutions and assert that the oil-rich country was “finally on the road to happiness”.