Omar Bongo

Gabon 's second president and dictator .

As the father of the third president Ali Bongo On Dimba , 42 years[4] During the long term, he reigned as a dictator. Not only Africa but also one of the top ten dictators in the world, one of the top ten dictators in the world.

Born on December 30, 1935 in Lewai, French Equatorial Africa.[5] He was born as the youngest of 12 siblings in a farmer's family of minority ethnic origin called Batake. His real name was Albert-Bernard Bongo, but in September 1973 he converted to Islam and changed his name to 'Omar'. has changed

Bongo lost all his parents at the age of 12, and after finishing elementary and secondary education in Brazabille , he joined the French Air Force in 1958 and became a lieutenant . In August 1960 , when Gabon became independent, he began his political activities as working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in August 1966, when he became Minister of Information and Tourism, and in August 1966, Bongo was actually in the hospital in Paris when Léon M'Ba, 1902-1967 was hospitalized. Afterwards, Bongo will be vice president of Gabon on November 12, 1966 with the support of Charles de Gaulle France .

When Léon Mba died on November 28, 1967 , four days later, on December 2, 1967, Bongo formally ascended to the presidency. From March 1968 to the constitutional amendment on May 22, 1990, only the ruling party called the Gabon Independence Party (PDG) was allowed, and a one-party dictatorship was created. And right after he came to power, Bongo concurrently served as Minister of Defense, Information, Planning, and Home Affairs, and even Prime Minister of Gabon. As crude oil prices skyrocketed due to the oil shock in the same year, Bongo achieved tremendous economic growth based on this.[6] Based on this money, they built infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, airlines, and power plants, and were praised overseas as 'the miracle of Gabon'. In the 1979 election, Bongo again won with 99.96%, and again in 1986 with 99.97%.

As the economy deteriorated in the late 1970s, the opposition party Morena, organized by college students, criticized Bongo's dictatorship and corruption, sponsored anti-dictatorship demonstrations and demanded the restoration of the multi-party system, and Bongo killed 37 of them in November 1982. They were brought to trial, and 13 of them were sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. However, they were all released by mid-1986.

Gabon experienced a recession in the late 1980s, and on May 23, 1990, Joseph Rendjambe, the leader of the main opposition PGP, died in a hotel, presumed to have been poisoned. In the aftermath, the largest anti-government protests since Bongo came to power erupted, and the presidential palace in Libreville was burned down, and the French consul general and 10 oil company employees were taken hostage. It happened. In response, the French dispatched troops to evacuate foreigners and calmed the situation by declaring a state of emergency in Gentil Port, Langenbe's hometown and a strategic oil production site.

The first round of voting for the first multi-party National Assembly election was held on September 16, 1990, but opposition supporters claimed that the election results had been manipulated and even destroyed ballot boxes. As a result of this incident, the entire voting was postponed to October-November of the same year. It ended with the Gabon Democratic Party winning 63 out of 120 seats.

In December 1993, Bongo was elected with 51.4% of the approval rating in the first presidential election held in a multi-party system.[7] In 1998, he was elected president with 66% of the approval rating. After the first multi-party election, Bongo was considerate of opposition politicians, and in 2003, when the 'only two 5-year terms allowed' stipulated in the constitution at the time came to an end, he amended the constitution again to change the presidential term to 'unlimited 7-year terms'. After being elected with 79.2% of the vote on November 27, 2005, he held his last presidential inauguration ceremony on January 29, 2006, and in 2009 Spain, where I stayed for convalescence on June 8th He died of colon cancer in Barcelona .[8] When Bongo died, Gabon declared 30 days of national mourning.[9] Bongo's body was moved to Libreville on June 11 and buried in his hometown on June 16 after a grand funeral attended by hundreds of thousands of people. The next president was his son, Ali Bongo Ondimba , who continued the hereditary dictatorship for 56 years until he was ousted by a coup in 2023 .

Although he was also accused of corruption for long -term power and daily dictatorship, Bongo was still a dictator who was very moderate unlike the dictators of common African countries such as Robert Mugabe , Mengistu Highle Mariam , Idiamine , Jean Bethel Boccasa , and Si -Baret . Of course , it was less, not. In fact, from 1972 to 1988, the free index of Gabon's world was PR 6+CL 6, which was classified as a 'richest' with an average free index, and it was everyday to imprison dissatisfaction in the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the 1980s. As a bonus, Bongo was somewhat unusually unusually executing or assassinating silence, but instead of loving to bribe the opposition and surrender to the government.[10]

Compared to other countries where there are constant civil wars between tribes or political factions, Gabon has led the country in a fairly stable manner, and has become one of the richest countries in Africa thanks to its own well-conceived economic plan that limits excessive development by foreign companies while accumulating national wealth through the development of crude oil and forests.[11] Compared to other African dictators, he is evaluated well both at home and abroad. Of course, even so, Gabon has also failed to redistribute wealth, so the unemployment rate is in the 20% range and the poverty rate is in the 30% range. Although it succeeded in suppressing conflict, some say that it was a waste of resources because it failed to redistribute the wealth from oil, and opinions are mixed in Gabon.[12]

Of course, he has been in power as the president of the oil producer for a long time, so he and his son have at least 45 mansions in France , and own $ 27 million in villa, $ 1.5 million Bugatti sports cars and dozens of other luxury cars. It is said to be. The Bongo family was also famous for going shopping in Paris after chartering Boeing 747 .



A commemorative stamp commemorating President Bongo's visit to Korea, issued in 1975. The reception at this time was so good that when the KBS history special production team visited Gabon the next day while investigating the African diplomacy of the Park Chung-hee regime , which was carried out as an extension of the regime competition with North Korea, they expressed their favor, saying that they had very good memories. Bongo visited Korea four times, in 1975, 1984, 1996, and 2007, almost every 10 years, and recorded the largest number of visits among African heads of state. Among Third World African countries, it was unusual to support Korea's position quite passionately, and at the 1975 Non-Aligned Conference's Lima Foreign Affairs Conference, it most strongly supported Korea's position along with Saudi Arabia.