Gabon's Ali Bongo: dynastic scion in his father's shadow

Libreville (AFP) - Ali Bongo of Gabon, who has been declared the winner of a disputed election in the central African country, has spent more than half his 57 years in the corridors of power.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Pacome Moubelet-Boubeya said Bongo, head of state since 2009 after decades in government, had beaten career diplomat Jean Ping by a margin of less than two percent of votes cast Saturday.

He is known variously by his initials ABO, Ali B and the less flattering "Monsieur Fils" for succeeding his father who ruled Gabon for 41 years.

The last nickname has always irked him the most: Bongo has long insisted he owes his position to his own merits rather than to nepotism, and has cast himself as a man apart from his his father.

Mindful that many Gabonese blame Omar Bongo for overseeing a corrupt regime that failed to translate oil wealth into poverty reduction, Ali Bongo campaigned on the slogan "Let's change together."

During the run-up to the election, he managed to shed his reputation as a dry, reticent man, coming to life on the campaign trail by cracking jokes and going head-to-head on stage with hired rap groups.

From Alain to Ali

He was born Alain Bernard Bongo on February 9, 1959, in the Congolese city of Brazzaville, which at the time was still part of France's rapidly shrinking colonial empire.

Bongo has strenuously denied his detractors' allegations that he was actually an adopted son born in Nigeria, and therefore ineligible to run for president in Gabon.

His father, who came to power in 1967 upon the death of Gabon's first post-independence leader, was serving in the French armed forces at the time of Ali's birth.

Supporters of the incumbent Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba gather at the rally for the opening of the electoral campaign in Libreville

His mother, Patience Dabany, was a singer, who went on to serve as first lady of Gabon for almost 20 years. She returned to pursuing a musical career in the United States after her divorce from Omar Bongo.

The young Bongo attended some of Brazzaville's top schools and went on to study law in France.

But his prestigious education did not extend to learning any of his country's local languages, a lapse that many have held against him.

From a young age, Bongo worked as a close aide to his father, travelling the world and building up extensive contacts in the US and in the Arab world.

Like his father, Bongo junior converted to Islam and took an Arabic first name in the 1970s, at a time when Arab oil-producing nations were flexing their economic muscle.

In August 1989, he was appointed foreign minister at the tender age of 30, but had to step down two years later when a new constitution stipulated that cabinet members had to be at least 35.

He was back in government by 1999, at the head of the defence ministry, where he remained until shortly before the start of the election campaign caused by the death of his father in 2009.

Stocky and curly-haired, Ali Bongo is one of two of the late president's children who have occupied key posts -- his elder sister Pascaline served as her father's chief-of-staff from 1994 until his death.

Omar Bongo liked to claim that the two children who worked for him were only there because of their talent, and not due to nepotism.

Well before Omar Bongo's drawn-out illness and death, it became clear that his son had his eye on the presidency, despite some opposition in the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), and the shadow of corruption left by his father who had been under investigation in France over the ownership of luxury properties.