Gabon’s parliament on Tuesday approved amendments to the constitution to fill a legal void in case the president becomes incapacitated, reported RFI.
There was a constitutional vacuum in Gabon two years ago when President Ali Bongo Ondimba suffered a stroke and took months to recover fully.
As per the constitutional change, if the head of state becomes temporarily or permanently incapacitated then the president’s power will be transferred to the speakers of the chambers of parliament and the defense minister.
The Assembly’s speaker Faustin Boukoubi said the proposal was passed by 89.1 percent of members of the National Assembly and Senate, gathered in a congress in the capital Libreville. Out of 229 voters, 204 voted in favor of the change, while 25 voted against it.
Congress also approved a constitutional change to declare that former presidents cannot be “accused, prosecuted, sought, arrested, detained or judged” for acts committed while they were in office.
The two chambers of Gabon’s parliament are dominated by Bongo supporters. Last week, Presidential spokesman Jessye Ella Ekogha said President Bongo wanted lessons to be learned from the legal uncertainties that had arisen due to his ill health two years back.
The opposition seemed against the proposed constitutional changes. Opposition leader Jean Gaspard Ntoutoume Ayi, of the National Union party, said the constitutional change was nothing but “a poor cover-up for a problem that everyone knows, which is that Bongo is no longer able to run Gabon.”
Ntoutoume Ayi is the head of Appel a Agir (Call to Act), the group which during Bongo’s recuperation had urged medical experts to assess the president’s health to see if he had been incapacitated.
He claimed that the constitutional amendments, especially the one providing presidential immunity, were symptoms of “great fear” and “proof that the actions of these people can be qualified as high treason.”
