page_title: Omar Bongo
section_title: Leadership style
hierarchical_section_title: Omar Bongo / Political career / Leadership style
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with President Bongo of Gabon at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC, March 8, 2010. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
context_page_description: El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was a Gabonese politician who was President of Gabon for 42 years, from 1967 until his death in 2009. Omar Bongo was promoted to key positions as a young official under Gabon's first President Léon M'ba in the 1960s, before being elected Vice-President in his own right in 1966. In 1967, he succeeded M'ba to become the second Gabon President, upon the latter's death.
  Bongo headed the single-party regime of the Gabonese Democratic Party 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 increased and the opposition becoming more subdued with each succeeding election. After Cuban President Fidel Castro stepped down in February 2008, Bongo became the world's longest-ruling non-royal leader.
context_section_description: [W]ith a neat mustache and piercing gaze often hidden behind dark glasses, he ruled....  He was a short man, like many of his minority Bateke ethnic group, and often wore raised platform shoes so as to appear taller... But his diminutive height belied his towering stature: on Gabon's political stage – which he ruled shrewdly for nearly 42 years -; and on the African continent, as one of the last of the so-called "big men".
  Omar Bongo, Africa's "little Big Man", described as "a diminutive, dapper figure who conversed in flawless French, a charismatic figure surrounded by a personality cult", was one of the last of the African "Big Man" rulers. The pillars of his long rule were France, revenues from Gabon's 2,500,000,000 barrels (400,000,000 m³) of oil reserves, and his political skills.
  An ardent Francophile, Bongo was at the inception of his Presidency happy to strike a favorable bargain with the old colonial power, France. He gave the French oil company, Elf Aquitaine, privileged rights to exploit Gabon's oil reserves while Paris returned the favor by guaranteeing his grip on power for the indefinite future.
  
  Bongo went on to preside over an oil boom that undoubtedly fueled an extravagant lifestyle for him and his family—dozens of luxurious properties in and around France, a US$800 million presidential palace in Gabon, fancy cars, etc. This enabled him to amass enough wealth to become one of the world's richest men. He carefully allowed just enough oil money to trickle down to the general population of 1.4 million, thus avoiding mass unrest. He built some basic infrastructure in Libreville and, ignoring advice to establish a road network instead, constructed the US$4bn Trans-Gabon Railway line deep into the forested interior. Petrodollars funded the salaries of a bloated civil service, spreading enough of the state's wealth among the population to keep most of them fed and dressed. Gabon under Bongo was described in 2008 by the UK Guardian newspaper:
  Gabon produces some sugar, beer and bottled water. Despite the rich soil and tropical climate, there is only a tiny amount of agricultural production. Fruit and vegetables arrive on trucks from Cameroon. Milk is flown in from France.  And years of dependence on relatives with civil service jobs means that many Gabonese have no interest in seeking work outside the state sector – most manual jobs are taken by immigrants.
  Bongo used part of the money to build up a fairly large circle of people who supported him such as government ministers, high administrators, and army officers. He had learned from Léon M'ba how to give government ministries to different tribal groups so that someone from every important group had a representative in the government. Bongo had no ideology beyond self-interest, but there was no opposition with an ideology either. He ruled by knowing how the self-interest of others could be manipulated. He was skilled at persuading opposition figures to become his allies. He offered critics modest slices of the nation's oil wealth, co-opting or buying off opponents rather than crushing them outright. He became the most successful of all Africa's Francophone leaders, comfortably extending his political dominance into the fifth decade.
  When multi-party presidential elections were held in 1993, which he won, the poll was marred by allegations of rigging, with the opposition claiming that chief rival, Father Paul Mba Abessole, was robbed of victory. Gabon found itself on the brink of a civil war, as the opposition staged violent demonstrations. Determined to prove that he was not a dictator who relied on brute force for his political survival, Bongo entered into talks with the opposition, negotiating what became known as the Paris Agreement. When Bongo won the second presidential elections held in 1998, similar controversy raged over his victory. The president responded by meeting some of his critics to discuss revising legislation to guarantee free and fair elections. After Bongo's Gabonese Democratic Party scored a landslide victory in the 2001 legislative electio
caption: Ali Bongo Ondimba with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March 2010
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