Gabon’s opposition leader has lodged a challenge to the presidential election result at the constitutional court.
Defeated presidential candidate Jean Ping has complained of fraud, pointing out that in one province incumbent Ali Bongo won 95% of the vote.
Former African Union chair Ping lost the election by less than 6,000 votes.
The European Union has said there were “clear anomalies” in last month’s poll – charges denied by Mr Bongo, who in turn accused Mr Ping of fraud.
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The lawsuit was filed on the final day allowed for legal challenges to the 27 August election.
The official election result, announced on 31 August, gave Bongo a second seven-year term with 49.8% of the vote to Ping’s 48.2%.
Ping criticised results in Bongo’s home province of Haut-Ogooue, where turnout was 99.93% and 95% of votes were for the president.
Turnout in the other provinces was between 45% and 71%, according to Gabon’s interior ministry.
A court has never overturned a presidential election result in Africa, according to Robert Gerenge, head of special programmes at the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa.
In the past year, losing candidates in Uganda and Zambia have failed in their legal efforts, although that it is not to say all elections are rigged.
In Zambia, a technicality stopped Hakainde Hichilema’s attempt to get last month’s presidential election result changed. He ran out of time to present his case.
Uganda’s supreme court in March dismissed Amama Mbabazi’s challenge saying that while there were issues, they did not affect the final result.
This ruling had a precedent across the continent.
Following Nigeria’s 2007 election, the legal process took 20 months before the courts had a final answer.
The supreme court said despite irregularities, there was no proof that they altered the outcome.
In Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai initially went to court in 2013 to challenge the re-election of President Robert Mugabe. But he dropped the case, saying that the president had stopped him from getting a fair hearing.
BBC
