President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose father ruled oil-rich Gabon for 41 years, says he will seek a second term in polls this year, pledging to fight, quote, “unwarranted privilege”.
He also vowed to diversify the economy in a country where oil accounts for 60 percent of state revenues.
Bongo was elected for a first term in a disputed 2009 vote following the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba.
Meanwhile a court in the western French city of Nantes on Monday, dismissed a case filed by his half-sister alleging his birth certificate was a forgery.
With presidential elections approaching, controversy was brewing over Ali Bongo’s place of birth with critics saying he falsified his birth certificate to hide the fact that he was adopted from another country.
The Gabonese constitution says heads of state must be born Gabonese but French investigative journalist Pierre Pean alleged in a book that the president was actually Nigerian and was adopted during the Biafran war in the late 1960s.
