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Skip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection Navigation SEARCH Africa SUBSCRIBE FOR $1/WEEKLog in Friday, July 26, 2024 Today’s Paper SUBSCRIBE FOR $1/WEEK Africa|Omar Bongo, Gabon Leader, Dies at 73 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/africa/09bongo.html * Share full article * * Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Supported by SKIP ADVERTISEMENT OMAR BONGO, GABON LEADER, DIES AT 73 * Share full article * * * Read in app By Adam Nossiter * June 8, 2009 DAKAR, Senegal President Omar Bongo of Gabon, Africa’s longest-entrenched autocrat, died Monday in Spain at the age of 73, having ruled his small West African nation for 41 years. He had become immensely wealthy in office while serving as France’s point man in the region. His death, at a hospital in Barcelona, was caused by cardiac arrest, the Gabonese government announced Monday. Until the end, the government had denied that Mr. Bongo had serious health problems, though several reports in recent weeks suggested that he had cancer. Mr. Bongo, a disciple of the first generation of African leaders, came to power in 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson was still president. He presided over an oil boom that fueled an extravagant lifestyle for him and his family dozens of luxurious properties in and around Paris, a $500 million presidential palace, fancy cars. But the tide of money did little to lift his country of 1.5 million people out of chronic poverty. Like other absolute rulers on the continent, Mr. Bongo curtailed dissent, opposition and the press. But unlike the regimes of others, his authoritarian rule was softened by the money from offshore oil fields, and his style was to co-opt or buy off opponents rather than crush them outright. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT For France, that made him a more respectable ally than others in the region. France maintains a military base in the capital, Libreville, has extensive oil interests in the country and long viewed Mr. Bongo as France’s “special partner,” in the words of President Nicolas Sarkozy. Last year Mr. Sarkozy demoted his minister in charge of looking after the former colonies, Jean-Marie Bockel, after Mr. Bockel referred to the “squandering of public funds” by some African regimes. The comment infuriated Mr. Bongo. Image Gabonese President Omar Bongo speaking during a special session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1995.Credit...Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mr. Bongo had been angry with France since French public-interest groups filed legal complaints more than two years ago accusing him and two other entrenched African leaders of “misuse of public funds” over their sumptuous property holdings in France. The allegations have unwound the tight relations between the French Republic and Gabon; embarrassed France’s executive branch; and shaken the enduring notion of Françafrique, the idea that France’s special dominion in Africa did not end with the independence of former French colonies. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT That Mr. Bongo chose a hospital in Spain, instead of France, for treatment of an unspecified condition was taken by many as proof of his anger. It intensified last month when an investigating magistrate in Paris, Françoise Desset, ruled that the complaint against Mr. Bongo and the two other African rulers, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, could proceed. Gabon’s Constitution calls for the Senate leader to assume power and organize presidential elections within 90 days of the president’s death. But some opposition figures spoke of a possible coup d’état, and it has been speculated that one of Mr. Bongo’s sons, who is the defense minister, might try to seize power. Philippe Hugon, a French expert on Africa and Gabon at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques, said a coup was unlikely, though he did not dismiss the possibility of unrest in the streets, which in 1990 forced Mr. Bongo to abandon nominally at least one-party rule. “Oil revenues have been captured by a minority,” Mr. Hugon said. “There isn’t much opportunity for youth.” Mr. Bongo, he added, had “lost legitimacy, even if there is no real opposition.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In Gabon, the government on Monday announced the closing of the country’s international airport and all of its land and sea borders, The Associated Press reported from Libreville. The mood there appeared tense. Security forces had taken positions in front of major government buildings and electrical installations. Many people rushed home after the news of the death was announced, many apparently to stockpile food in the event of store closings. There were huge traffic jams. Mr. Bongo, often by necessity, was skilled at persuading opposition figures to become his allies. A son of one of the country’s smaller ethnic groups, he never had the luxury of drawing on the support of a dominant group. El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was born in 1935 to a peasant family in southeastern Gabon. He attained the vice presidency of his newly independent country in 1967 as a protégé of the country’s first ruler, Léon M’Ba. He rose to the presidency after Mr. M’Ba’s unexpected death that year, and he never let go: through several elections Mr. Bongo won overwhelming majorities, which were duly denounced as fraudulent by increasingly powerless opponents. Gabon’s oil riches, meanwhile, flowed upward but not outward, as Mr. Bongo and his family became serious French property owners while his country remained poverty-stricken. (He had a number of children, but precise information on his survivors was not available.) At the same time, Gabon’s “human rights record remained poor,” the State Department said in a recent report, citing limitations on free speech and examples of arbitrary arrest and torture. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In France, his old ally, Mr. Bongo and his family lived in the rarefied air of the super-rich. At their disposal were 39 luxurious properties, 70 bank accounts and at least 9 luxury vehicles worth about $2 million, according to Transparency International, an organization that has sued Mr. Bongo. The family’s apartments at 15-19 Avenue Rapp alone were acquired by Mr. Bongo’s wife, Édith Lucie Bongo, for more than 3 million euros (about $3.5 million) in 2005, according to the French human rights organization Sherpa, also a plaintiff against Mr. Bongo. She died in March. “The facts are damning, and the proof is overwhelming,” said William Bourdon, the French rights lawyer who shepherded the legal complaint against Mr. Bongo and who founded Sherpa. “The buildings were bought in Paris. It’s the crime of receiving stolen goods, acquiring property through illicit means. Nobody can imagine that these properties were acquired through his salary of 20,000 euros a month.” Victoria Burnett contributed reporting from Madrid. 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