Gabon is denouncing the “provincial judges” who want to increase their popularity at Africa’s expense. They are making an official appeal for the “thorough” re-examination of “cooperative agreements with France.”

Gabon wasted no time in response to the personal accounts of President Omar Bongo Ondimba being seized in France. Firstly, via his press office, the Gabonese leader issued a virulent statement against the “provincial judges” who want to increase their popularity at Africa’s expense. He then issued a statement by way of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) which is making an official appeal for a “thorough” re-examination of “cooperative agreements with France.”

The tone of these remarks is particularly acerbic coming from the wealthy oil-exporting African nation which has long been considered to be the exclusive property of “mainland” France. Indeed, the litigious case surrounding René Cardona, the French businessman who had sold a weapons and fishing equipment company to the Gabonese president seems to be a discrete ploy to push for a shift in French policy in Africa that was announced the after President Sarkozy took office. According to an African diplomat stationed in Rabat, the question of “mutual gain” has since then become a stumbling block. The daily paper, L’Union asks a pressing question: Could “the media frenzy that French public and private media have whipped up around the Gabonese president and his family” be motivated by something other than the quest for justice? According to the satiric weekly, Le Nganga, the French justice department’s interest in this case masks trade-related intentions. “We had forgotten that Gabon is a banana farm where we grow nice, sweet bananas for France,” noted the newspaper which detects, in the French government’s attitude, signs of annoyance with the monumental arrival of the Chinese in the region. The case of the rich Belinga mine (see www.lesafriques.com) ceded to the Chinese as a part of a brilliant financial “Chinese style” deal (I will mine your iron; I will give you concessionary loans; I will take care of any fees or infrastructural needs arising from this) had provoked unprecedented disdain among some NGO’s who cried out in the name of environmental safety.

A reminder: a French military base is stationed in Gabon. Some 10,000 French expatriates live in this small Central African country.

AW