Gabon’s Parliament approves constitutional changes in case of incapacity of president, immunity after office

Gabon’s Parliament has approved constitutional changes to fill a legal void if the president becomes incapacitated and grant heads of state immunity after they leave office.

Under the new constitutional provision, the president’s power will be transferred to a triumvirate – the speakers of its chambers of parliament and the defence minister – if the head of state becomes temporarily or permanently incapacitated.

According to the Assembly’s Speaker Faustin Boukoubi, the proposal was passed by 89.1 percent of members of the National Assembly and Senate, gathered in a congress in the capital Libreville.

The congress also approved a change to the constitution to declare that former presidents cannot be “accused, prosecuted, sought, arrested, detained or judged” for acts committed while they were in office.

Presidential spokesman Jessye Ella Ekogha told a press conference on December 22 that Bongo wanted “every lesson to be learned” from the legal uncertainties that had arisen from his ill health.

Opposition leader Jean Gaspard Ntoutoume Ayi, of the National Union party, said the constitutional change “was thrown together – it’s a poor cover-up for a problem that everyone knows, which is that Mr Bongo is no longer able to run the country”.

Ntoutoume Ayi is head of a group called Appel a Agir (Call to Act) which during Bongo’s convalescence had urged medical experts to assess the president’s health to see if he had been incapacitated.

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”, he charged.