Gabon’s president is re-elected, thanks to a 99.93% turnout in his home province

IN GABON, a central African country of 1.8m people, it is not easy to avoid president Ali Bongo Ondimba’s face. At the airport, his portrait hangs behind the immigration desk, Mr Bongo leaning on an expensive chair. In government offices, the same, and private businesses too. When your correspondent visited, he beamed out of posters for the latest copy of the French magazine, Jeune Afrique. In the local papers, he is generally the main feature on the front page.

The pictures seem unlikely to change soon. On August 27th, Mr Bongo, who has been president since 2009, following his father who ruled for 42 years, submitted himself to re-election. Few expected him to lose, and he did not disappoint. But the outcome was far closer than most analysts expected. In the end, the results took four days to come out, and when Mr Bongo was declared the winner—beating Jean Ping, a former chairman of the commission of the African Union—it was by just a few thousand votes.

It was far from a clean result. The European Union declared that the vote “lacked transparency”. This would seem an understatement. To get to his final winning tally, Mr Bongo took 95% of the vote in his home province, Haut-Ogooué, on a turnout of 99.93%. That was a province with a population whose size was disputed to begin with.

After the vote, supporters of Mr Ping rioted, setting fire to the Gabonese National Assembly in the capital, Libreville. Several people were killed in clashes with the security forces. Mr Ping’s offices were surrounded and he was, in effect, put under house arrest. Today, the streets are calm. Mr Ping has been released, after French pressure (France is the former colonial power and still influential). But the calm may not last. France’s ruling Socialist Party has in effect called for Mr Bongo to step aside, something he evidently has little intention of doing. Mr Ping, meanwhile, has turned to the New York Times, asking the American people to “help my country through a crisis for our democracy”.

Mr Bongo’s problem is that he seems to want to be judged as a real democratically-elected world statesman, not as a thuggish autocrat. When The Economist interviewed him in July he adamantly argued that he is tolerant of criticism. “In very few places in the world will you see a head of state being treated the way I am treated,” he said. That is fair, up to a point. Mr Ping’s campaign even alleged that Mr Bongo is not really Gabonese. President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, or Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, would never permit such attacks. But then Mr Bongo never wanted to be part of their club.

Now, whether he wanted to or not, he has joined his neighbours. It is to be seen whether he can stand the terms of membership. Had he been able to win the vote cleanly, and without the post-election violence, France and other important Western allies would probably have turned a blind eye to a little repression. Now they cannot help but notice it.

And Mr Bongo heads a country in a deep economic crisis, thanks to the fall in the price of oil. The country ran a 2.5% of GDP surplus in 2014, but that swung into deficit last year. This year, the deficit is likely to be wider still, thanks to spending for the African Cup of Nations next year. The government admits it will have to borrow to make up the difference this year or early next—quite probably from the IMF. Mr Bongo’s strategy so far has been to tout for foreign direct investment to make up for oil. That has had some success. Oil has fallen from half of GDP in 2008 to less than a third now. But with his reputation now in the drain, will that still work?