Gabon is essentially a one man state, a dictatorship masked under the polite guise of democracy. President Bongo is a very powerful man with an enormously successful PR strategy.
Democracy in Gabon means that you are the only candidate who has enough capital to run for president. It means that you are able to distribute posters of yourself to every town in the country. Democracy means that these posters carry a certain social weight to the people they are given to. Democracy means that you print a million t-shirts with your picture on it to hand out to villagers deep in the bush. No one has ever given these villagers anything, so they like you immediately. Democracy means that you hire an elaborate PR firm to run your campaign bus and blaze a trail around the country. It means that you hire a few bulldozers to follow you during your campaigning to "start work" on the road that will be finished during your next term... a tarmac road all the way to capital Libreville (a magical place Gabonese villagers have never seen).
Come election time, the only picture that the citizens have seen is yours. Naturally, they vote for the candidate that they recognize from every t-shirt, poster and campaign gift. Then, the bulldozers leave along with all the other empty promises and don't come back for another ten years.
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