(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondinmba, Gabon President and Long-Serving African Ruler, Dies at 73 [1]
['Adam Nossiter']
Date: 2009-06-09
DAKAR, Senegal President Omar Bongo of Gabon, Africa’s longest-entrenched autocrat, died Monday in Spain at the age of 73, having ruled his small West African nation for 41 years. He had become immensely wealthy in office while serving as France’s point man in the region.
His death, at a hospital in Barcelona, was caused by cardiac arrest, the Gabonese government announced Monday. Until the end, the government had denied that Mr. Bongo had serious health problems, though several reports in recent weeks suggested that he had cancer.
Mr. Bongo, a disciple of the first generation of African leaders, came to power in 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson was still president. He presided over an oil boom that fueled an extravagant lifestyle for him and his family dozens of luxurious properties in and around Paris, a $500 million presidential palace, fancy cars. But the tide of money did little to lift his country of 1.5 million people out of chronic poverty.
Like other absolute rulers on the continent, Mr. Bongo curtailed dissent, opposition and the press. But unlike the regimes of others, his authoritarian rule was softened by the money from offshore oil fields, and his style was to co-opt or buy off opponents rather than crush them outright.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/africa/09bongo.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
