Gabon’s Ali Bongo narrowly wins second term

Gabon’s Ali Bongo narrowly wins second term

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo has narrowly won a second term in office, taking 49.80 of the vote against 48.23 percent for his rival Jean Ping, Interior Minister Pacome Moubelet-Boubeya said Wednesday. Bongo won by a narrow 5,594 votes of a total 627,805 registered voters. 

Turnout was 59.46 percent nationwide but soared to 99.93 percent in one of the country’s nine provinces — the Haut-Ogooue, heartland of Bongo’s Teke ethnic group — in a result hotly contested by the opposition.