LIBREVILLE, Gabon: Mutinous soldiers in Gabon announced late Wednesday that the head of the country’s elite republican guard would lead the Central African country, hours after saying they had placed the country’s newly re-elected president under house arrest.
The coup leaders said in an announcement on Gabon’s state TV that Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema had been “unanimously” designated president of a transitional committee to lead the country.
Oligui is the cousin of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who earlier Wednesday had been declared the winner of the country’s presidential election in a victory that appeared to extend his family’s 55-year rule in the oil-rich nation.
In a video apparently from detention in his residence, Bongo called on people to “make noise” to support him. But the crowds who took to the streets of the capital instead celebrated the coup against a dynasty accused of getting rich on the country’s resource wealth while many of its citizens struggle.
“Thank you, army. Finally, we’ve been waiting a long time for this moment,” said Yollande Okomo, standing near soldiers from Gabon’s elite republican guard, one of the units that staged the takeover.
Coup leaders said there would be a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time but that people would be allowed to move about freely during the day on Thursday.
“The president of the transition insists on the need to maintain calm and serenity in our beautiful country ... At the dawn of a new era, we will guarantee the peace, stability and dignity of our beloved Gabon,” Lt. Col. Ulrich Manfoumbi said on state TV Wednesday.
Bongo, 64, has served two terms since coming to power in 2009 after the death of his father, who ruled the country for 41 years, and there has been widespread discontent with his reign. Another group of mutinous soldiers attempted a coup in 2019 but was quickly overpowered.
The former French colony is a member of OPEC, but its oil wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few — and nearly 40 percent of Gabonese aged 15 to 24 were out of work in 2020, according to the World Bank. Its oil export revenue was $6 billion in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration, or $2,720 per capita.
Nine members of the Bongo family, meanwhile, are under investigation in France, and some face preliminary charges of embezzlement, money laundering and other forms of corruption, according to Sherpa, a French NGO dedicated to accountability. Investigators have linked the family to more than $92 million in properties in France, including two villas in Nice, the group says.
A spokesman for the soldiers who claimed power Wednesday said that Bongo’s “unpredictable, irresponsible governance” risked leading the country into chaos. In a later statement, the coup leaders said people around the president had been arrested for “high betrayal of state institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds (and) international financial embezzlement.”
Some analysts warned that the takeover risked bringing instability and could have more to do with divisions among the ruling elite than efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Gabonese. Celebrating soldiers hoisted the head of the republican guard — who is a relative of Bongo — into the air. It’s unclear if the military intends to name him as their new leader.
The coup came about one month after mutinous soldiers in Niger seized power from the democratically elected government, and is the latest in a series of coups across West and Central Africa in recent years. The impunity those putschists enjoyed may have inspired the soldiers in Gabon, said Maja Bovcon, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a risk assessment firm.
In weekend elections, Bongo faced an opposition coalition led by Albert Ondo Ossa, an economics professor and former education minister whose surprise nomination came a week before the vote. Every election held in Gabon since the country’s return to a multiparty system in 1990 has ended in violence, and there were fears this one would as well.
The vote was criticized by international observers, but a relative calm prevailed until the early hours of Wednesday, when Bongo was declared the winner. Minutes later, gunfire was heard in the center of the capital, Libreville. Later, a dozen uniformed soldiers appeared on state television and announced that they had seized power.
Soon after, crowds poured into the streets. Shopkeeper Viviane Mbou offered the soldiers juice.
“Long live our army,” said Jordy Dikaba, a young man walking with his friends on a street lined with armored policemen.
Libreville is a stronghold of support for the opposition, but it was unclear how the coup attempt was seen in the countryside, where more people traditionally back Bongo.
The president pleaded for support in a video showing him sitting in a chair with a bookshelf behind him. He said he was detained in his residence and that his wife and son were elsewhere.
“I’m calling you to make noise, to make noise, to make noise really,” he said in English. The video was shared with The Associated Press by BTP Advisers, a communications firm that helped the president with polling for the election.
The coup leaders have said the president was under house arrest, surrounded by family and doctors.
Ossa, the opposition leader, told The AP he wasn’t ready to comment and was waiting for the situation to evolve.
“Gabon was in a midst of another electoral coup, so a coup chased another coup and the latest one has more chances of being popular, but let’s remain cautious,” said Thomas Borrel, a spokesperson for the Paris-based human rights group Survie, which advocates against France’s interventionist policies in Africa. “If a military dictatorship replaces Bongo’s dictatorship, the Gabonese population would lose again.”
The mutinous officers vowed to respect “Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.” But the coup attempt threatened to bring the economy to a halt.
A man who answered the phone at the airport said flights were canceled Wednesday, and the private intelligence firm Ambrey said all operations at the country’s main port in Libreville had been halted, with authorities refusing to grant permission for vessels to leave. Several French companies said they were suspending operations and moving to ensure the safety of their staff.
“France condemns the military coup that is underway in Gabon and is closely monitoring developments in the country,” French government spokesperson, Olivier Veran, said Wednesday.
France has maintained close economic, diplomatic and military ties with Gabon, and has 400 soldiers stationed in the country leading a regional military training operation. The US Africa Command said it has no forces stationed in the Central African nation other than at the US Embassy.
Unlike Niger and two other West African countries run by military juntas, Gabon hasn’t been wracked by jihadi violence and had been seen as relatively stable.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the events in Gabon were being followed with “great concern.” He said it was too early to call it part of a trend or a “domino effect” in military takeovers on the continent.
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, however, cited a “contagion of autocracy we are seeing spread across our continent,” in a statement issued by his office. It said he was conferring with other heads of state and the African Union, whose commission condemned the coup and called for a return to “democratic constitutional order.”
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said Gabon would be discussed by the bloc’s ministers this week, adding that another military coup, if confirmed, would increase “instability in the whole region.”
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, called on the parties to resolve the issue peacefully.
Soldiers in Gabon say they’ve seized power and appointed the republican guard chief as head of state
https://arab.news/cx96r
Soldiers in Gabon say they’ve seized power and appointed the republican guard chief as head of state
- The coup leaders said in an announcement on Gabon’s state TV that Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema had been “unanimously” designated president of a transitional committee
- In a video apparently from detention in his residence, Bongo called on people to “make noise” to support him
Top defense officials say Ukraine war has blurred lines, exposing global threats
North Korea has sent troops to fight on the front lines in Ukraine, while China has supported Russia economically and technologically while opposing international sanctions.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premiere defense forum, that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia and suggested it could embolden China in its territorial claims on Taiwan and virtually the entire South China Sea.
“If Russia prevails in Ukraine, it’s not about Europe. It’s not about one region,” she said. “It will send a very clear signal also to smaller states here in Indo-Pacific that anyone can ignore their borders, that any fabricated excuse can justify invasion.”
The comments echoed those from French President Emmanuel Macron as he opened the conference on Friday advocating for greater European engagement in the Indo-Pacific.
On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested European countries should focus their defense efforts in their own region and leave the Indo-Pacific more to the US, but Šakalienė said the regions were clearly intertwined.
“It’s not a secret that when we talk about the main perpetrators in cybersecurity against Japan it’s China, Russia and North Korea,” she said.
“When we talk about main cybersecurity perpetrators against Lithuania it’s Russia, China and Belarus — two out of the three are absolutely the same.”
She added that “the convergence of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea into an increasingly coordinated authoritarian axis,” demands a unified response. Iran has been a key supplier of attack drones to Russia for its war effort.
“In this context, the United States’ strategic focus on Indo-Pacific is both justified and necessary, but this is not America’s responsibility alone,” she said.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters on the sidelines that his main takeaway from the three-day conference, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was the “real intent in the way in which European countries have engaged” in the debates.
“It reflects the sense of connection, interconnectedness ... between Indo-Pacific on the one hand and the North Atlantic on the other,” he said.
China sent a lower-level delegation from its National Defense University this year to the conference, but its Foreign Ministry on Sunday responded to comments from Hegseth that Beijing was destabilizing the region and preparing to possibly seize Taiwan by force.
“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, who is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” it said, while reiterating its stance that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese matter.
“The US must neve play with fire on this question,” the ministry said.
Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr, whose country has been involved in increasingly violent clashes with China over competing claims in the South China Sea, scoffed at the idea that the US was the problem.
“What the Chinese government considers fair and just may stand in stark contrast to the norms and values accepted by the rest of the world, especially the smaller countries,” he said.
“To envision a China-led international order, we only need to look at how they treat their much smaller neighbors in the South China Sea.”
He also underscored the international implications of the tensions in the Indo-Pacific, noting that the South China Sea was one of several maritime routes that are “arteries of the global economy.”
“Disruption in any of these maritime corridors triggers ripple effects across continents, impacting trade flows, military deployments, and diplomatic posture,” he said.
Mexico’s first judicial elections stir controversy and confusion among voters
- Instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions
MEXICO CITY: Mexico is holding its first ever judicial elections on Sunday, stirring controversy and sowing confusion among voters still struggling to understand a process set to transform the country’s court system.
Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, overhauled the court system late last year, fueling protests and criticism that the reform is an attempt by those in power to seize on their political popularity to gain control of the branch of government until now out of their reach.
“It’s an effort to control the court system, which has been a sort of thorn in the side” of those in power, said Laurence Patin, director of the legal organization Juicio Justo in Mexico. “But it’s a counter-balance, which exists in every healthy democracy.”
Now, instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and party allies have said the elections are a way to purge the court system of corruption in a country that has long faced high levels of impunity. Critics say the vote could damage democracy and open the judicial system up further to organized crime and other corrupt actors hoping to get a grip on power.
That process has only grown more chaotic in the run-up to the vote.
Civil society organizations like Defensorxs have raised red flags about a range of candidates running for election, including lawyers who represented some of Mexico’s most feared cartel leaders and local officials who were forced to resign from their positions due to corruption scandals.
Also among those putting themselves forward are ex-convicts imprisoned for years for drug-trafficking to the United States and a slate of candidates with ties to a religious group whose spiritual leader is behind bars in California after pleading guilty to sexually abusing minors.
At the same time, voters have been plagued by confusion over a voting process that Patin warned has been hastily thrown together. Voters often have to choose from sometimes more than a hundred candidates who are not permitted to clearly voice their party affiliation or carry out widespread campaigning.
As a result, many Mexicans say they’re going into the vote blind. Mexico’s electoral authority has investigated voter guides being handed out across the country, in what critics say is a blatant move by political parties to stack the vote in their favor.
“Political parties weren’t just going to sit with their arms crossed,” Patin said.
Miguel Garcia, a 78-year-old former construction worker, stood in front of the country’s Supreme Court on Friday peering at a set of posters, voter guides with the faces and numbers of candidates.
He was fiercely scribbling down their names on a small scrap of paper and said that he had traveled across Mexico City to try to inform himself ahead of the vote, but he couldn’t find any information other than outside the courthouse.
“In the neighborhood where I live, there’s no information for us,” he said. “I’m confused, because they’re telling us to go out and vote but we don’t know who to vote for.”
Bridge collapse causes train to derail in Russia’s Bryansk region, killing at least 7 people
- Moscow Railways blamed the bridge collapse on “illegal interference”
- The bridge is in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine
MOSCOW: A passenger train derailed in western Russia late Saturday after a bridge collapsed because of what local officials described as “illegal interference,” killing at least seven people and injuring 30.
The bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, was damaged “as a result of illegal interference in transport operations,” Moscow Railways said in a statement, without elaborating.
Russia’s federal road transportation agency, Rosavtodor, said the destroyed bridge passed above the railway tracks where the train was traveling.
Photos posted by government agencies from the scene appeared to show passenger cars from the train ripped apart and lying amid fallen concrete from the collapsed bridge. Other footage on social media appeared to be taken from inside other vehicles that narrowly avoided driving onto the bridge before it collapsed.
Bryansk regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said emergency services and government officials were working at the scene. He said seven people died and two children were among the 30 injured.
“Everything is being done to provide all necessary assistance to the victims,” he said. Russian officials have not said who is responsible for Saturday’s incident, but in the past some officials have accused pro-Ukrainian saboteurs of attacking Russia’s railway infrastructure. The details surrounding such incidents, however, are limited and cannot be independently verified.
Ukrainian media outlets reported in December 2023 that Kyiv’s top spy agency had successfully carried out two explosions on a railroad line in Siberia that serves as a key conduit for trade between Russia and China. Ukraine’s security services did not comment on the reports.
Russian Railways confirmed one of the explosions described by Ukrainian media, but did not say what had caused it. There was no comment from Russian authorities on a second explosion.
UK faces choice next week between health and other spending, IFS think tank warns
- The non-partisan IFS said this spending review could prove to be “one of the most significant domestic policy events” for the current Labour government
LONDON: British finance minister Rachel Reeves’ key decision in next week’s multi-year spending review will be how much to spend on health care versus other public services, the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said on Sunday.
Reeves is due to set out day-to-day spending limits for other government departments on June 11 which will run through to the end of March 2029 — almost until the end of the Labour government’s expected term in office.
Britain has held periodic government spending reviews since 1998, but this is the first since 2015 to cover multiple years, other than one in 2021 focused on the COVID pandemic.
The non-partisan IFS said this spending review could prove to be “one of the most significant domestic policy events” for the current Labour government.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement in February that defense spending would reach 2.5 percent of national income by 2027 had already used the room for further growth in public investment created in Reeves’ October budget, it said.
“Simultaneously prioritising additional investments in public services, net zero and growth-friendly areas ... will be impossible,” said Bee Boileau, a research economist at the IFS.
Non-investment public spending is intended to rise by 1.2 percent a year on top of inflation between 2026-27 and 2028-29, according to budget plans which Reeves set out in October — half the pace of spending growth in the current and previous financial year.
The IFS sees no scope for this to be topped up, as Reeves’ budget rules leave almost no room for extra borrowing and tax rises are now limited to her annual budget statement.
This forces Reeves and Starmer to choose between the demands of the public health care system — plagued by long waiting times and a slump in productivity since the COVID-19 pandemic — and other stretched areas.
In past spending reviews, annual health care spending has typically risen 2 percentage points faster than total spending.
If that happened this time — equivalent to an annual increase of 3.4 percent — spending in other departments would have to fall by 1 percent a year in real terms, the IFS forecast.
Raising health care spending at roughly the same pace as other areas — a 1.2 percent rise — would only just keep pace with an aging population and not allow any reversal of recent years’ deterioration in service quality, the IFS said.
Spending cuts could be achieved by scaling back services provided by the state, reducing public-sector employment or real-terms cuts in public-sector pay, it added.
But it warned the government needed to be specific about how it planned to make cuts, or risk financial markets losing confidence in its ability to keep borrowing under control.
The review does not cover spending on pensions or other benefits, which the government is tackling separately.
Britain plans at least six new weapons factories in defense review
- The 1.5 billion-pound ($2.0 billion) investment will be included in the Strategic Defense Review, a 10-year plan for military equipment and services
MANCHESTER, England: Britain will build at least six new factories producing weapons and explosives as part of a major review of its defense capabilities, the government said on Saturday.
The 1.5 billion-pound ($2.0 billion) investment will be included in the Strategic Defense Review, a 10-year plan for military equipment and services. The SDR is expected to be published on Monday.
The Ministry of Defense added that it planned to procure up to 7,000 long-range weapons built in Britain. Together, the measures announced on Saturday will create around 1,800 jobs, the MoD said.
“The hard-fought lessons from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them,” Defense Secretary John Healey said in a statement.
“We are strengthening the UK’s industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad.”
The extra investment will mean Britain will spend around 6 billion pounds on munitions in the current parliament, the MoD said.
Earlier on Saturday, the MoD said it would spend an extra 1.5 billion pounds to tackle the poor state of housing for the country’s armed forces.
