Omar Bongo

Uncommon card · No. 195127

Omar Bongo Ondimba (born Albert-Bernard Bongo; 30 December 1935 – 8 June 2009) was the second president of Gabon, serving from 1967 until his death in 2009. A member of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), Bongo was promoted to key positions as a young official under Gabon's first president Léon M'ba in the 1960s, before being made the second vice president in 1966, replacing Paul-Marie Yembit. In 1967, after M'ba's death, he became the country's president. Bongo headed the single-party regime of the PDG until 1990, when, faced with public pressure, he was forced to introduce multi-party politics into Gabon. His political survival despite intense opposition to his rule in the early 1990s seemed to stem once again from consolidating power by bringing most of the major opposition leaders at the time to his side. The 1993 presidential election was extremely controversial but ended with his re-election then and the subsequent elections of 1998 and 2005. His respective parliamentary majorities...

Read on Wikipedia · Image © European Union 2015 - Source : EP, European Parliament