This presiden't dead

The attitude towards Omar Bongo’s death-throws in Gabon reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch about the parrot: “This parrot’s dead”. “No it’s not, it’s just pining.” Less than twenty-four hours’ ago the Gabonese Prime Minister would have had his people believe that the man who’d been president for forty-two years was in rude good health and enjoying a holiday in Spain, though with his gargantuan wealth, the result of years of plundering state coffers, it wasn’t just a cheap package deal.

Gabon is a country which should be rich. It’s got lots of oil and a small population. Instead, the nation’s oil riches have generally been skimmed off by the president, his family and his wider circle of well-wishers, cabinet ministers, and senior civil servants. It is estimated that Bongo has real estate in France worth $190 million, while his bank accounts hold another $130 million. He and his mentor president Leon M’Ba, were French puppets, African ciphers who basically protected French political and commercial interests in French Equatorial Africa. The French have soldiers there, ostensibly to protect the many French civilians, though everyone knows that their real role is to protect the government in the event, highly unlikely, of civil unrest. In some ways Bongo has lately been the most civilised of dictators. Instead of killing opponents he has bribed them to stay quiet, a policy which some in the west should attempt to follow.

Lately Bongo’s French friends have become a little more lukewarm about backing their former allies in Africa. Sarkozy has been responsible for a lot of this reassessment. This is why Bongo did not make a bee-line for a nice, plus Parisian clinic on the first signs that the grim reaper were eyeing him up, but was forced to seek treatment in Barcelona. Had he landed in France there was the risk that he might have been arrested.

So what will happen to Gabon now? The constitution stipulates that the president of the senate, Mme Rose Francine Rogombe, should take charge in the event of the death of the head of state. Things are not quite as rotten as in Guinea. There is some infrastructure. The army is perfectly loyal. Because Bongo acted like a king, indeed an emperor, it is quite likely that power will eventually pass to one of his off-springs, maybe his son who is minister for Defence, but most people seem to accept that his daughter Pascaline is the real boss in Libreville.