Special Reports - Underneath Palatial Skin, Corruption Rules Gabon

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Posted September 15, 2009

International

LIBREVILLE JOURNAL

Underneath Palatial Skin, Corruption Rules Gabon

DANIEL MAGNOWSKI/REUTERS

The image of Ali Bongo, the son of longtime ruler Omar Bongo, blanketed Libreville. *Related text and images: My quality of life, your quality of life

By ADAM NOSSITER

LIBREVILLE, Gabon — In the airport duty-free store, the wine is upward of $400. The service at the fancy French restaurants in the chic Louis district is immaculate, and at the luxury hotel on the sea the call girls dress like fashion models.

The futuristic government palaces on Omar Bongo Triumphal Boulevard, with their flying-saucer and rocket-ship outcroppings, marbled interiors and expanses of plate glass, would make the pedestrian feel humble, if there were any. It is almost as if you could be in a prosperous city in Texas.

But you are in Gabon, and behind the late ruler’s palaces, which line the wide empty boulevard, are shacks and shanties stretching to the horizon, dirt roads and street vendors eking out a living selling cigarettes and imported vegetables. Most live on less than $2 a day in this little Central African country, rich in both oil and poor people. Evidence of the gulf between the haves (Mr. Bongo’s extended clan) and the have-nots (everybody else) is always just around the corner.

REBECCA BLACKWELL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

An unidentied man foraging for food at the main dump.

This is the late Mr. Bongo’s legacy: Libreville as a pop-up book representation of his regime of “ill-acquired goods,” as the French good-government activists who sued him last year call it.

The “Bongo system,” as people here refer to it — forsaking roads, schools and hospitals for the sake of Mr. Bongo’s 66 bank accounts, 183 cars, 39 luxury properties in France and grandiose government constructions in Libreville — is etched in the streets of this languid seaside capital, where he ruled for 41 years, and also in the minds of its inhabitants.

Even his inheritor-son Ali, the winner of a contested presidential election last month, tacitly acknowledged the stunning inequality left behind by his father, as nakedly evident as the contrast between the beguiling palm-fringed seafront, with high-rises that would not be out of place in Nice, and the slums close behind.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Bongo, who died in June, envisioned his capital as a monument to himself: legislators meet in the Palais Omar Bongo Ondimba; students go to the Université Omar Bongo; athletes compete in the Gymnase Omnisport Omar Bongo. Instead, it is a kind of living museum of “kleptocracy,” as a Western development official here put it, a shrine to the ruthlessly acquisitive tendencies sometimes found among Africa’s rulers.

“Did you go behind the buildings? What did you see?” asked Marc Ona, an environmental activist and antigovernment dissident imprisoned under the late president for his work. “Misery is everywhere,” Mr. Ona said. “Corruption is everywhere.”

A Western family here spoke of embarrassment at visiting a government minister whose house is packed with the latest flat-screen televisions and other expensive electronic gadgets, and whose garage was full of luxury cars. The top aide to a leading opposition figure, discussing the “Bongo system,” said: “You had to bring a suitcase to the palace. Bongo didn’t write checks.” The president, he said, “calls everybody to the palace, and the money is handed out. That’s how the country was run.”

He spoke of a “sandwich system” of vote-buying employed by the ruling party in rural districts: notables are called together for a meeting, and at the end, when all are tired, a tray of “sandwiches” is passed around. Inside each “sandwich” is up to $600.

Looking around at an outdoor restaurant, he asked not to be named because he said: “It’s a police state. They mess up your life.”

Security officials routinely shake down citizens for services, sometimes with the tongue-and-cheek explanation, “so we can go get some juice.”

The example was set at the top. “The money from oil kept the patronage machine going, from whence, generalized corruption,” said Mr. Ona, who recently won the prestigious American-based Goldman Environmental Prize for fighting a Bongo mining deal.

On paper, the government’s budget allocations for health, education and transportation were impressive, “huge,” said the Western development official. “But in reality, it was actually about 20 percent of what was on paper,” the official said. “The rest was embezzled,” he added, asking to remain anonymous because identifying him would complicate his work in the country.

The fortress-like presidential palace is an immense edifice occupying a big chunk of the seafront. In interview after interview, citizens here were angry about the effects of the “Bongo system,” especially given how easy it is to distinguish the top government officials — beneficiaries of the “system” — from everybody else. They are the ones wearing nicely-tailored suits.

“It’s a tiny number that benefits from the country’s riches,” said a cigarette vendor, Price Nyamam, squatting on the pavement in the poor Rio district. He said he had degrees in economics and sociology. “You are obliged to do work that doesn’t correspond to your aspirations.”

Several times during his long reign, Mr. Bongo had to contend with unrest and rioting, just as his son did last week; a Bongo family compound, walled from the street, stretches for hundreds and hundreds of yards at the edge of town and abuts, perhaps not coincidentally, the big French military base here.

“Only the presidential family can enter,” said Elie Ithengui, a chauffeur, surveying the endless pastel-colored wall from across the road. It was the day before Ali Bongo’s win was announced, and Mr. Ithengui was already contemplating, sadly, the continuation of Bongo family rule. “What can I call it?” he said “Force. We have been under the thumb of a single party.” The opposition, Mr. Ithengui said, “doesn’t have the weapons. Doesn’t have the soldiers. With us, here in Gabon, it has been force.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, International, of Tuesday, September 15, 2009.

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