Global News Podcast: Gabon coup: Army annuls elections and seizes power

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Nigel Adderley and at 13 hours GMT on Wednesday the 30th of August, these are our main stories.

The president of Gabon is reported to be under house arrest after army officers seized power.

Thousands have fled the Gulf Coast of Florida as Hurricane Adalia makes landfall.

Also in this podcast.

As cruise missiles hit Kiev and Ukrainian drone strikes caused damage across Russia,

we hear about life on the Eastern Frontline.

We start this podcast with news of another coup in West Africa,

where Gabon's President Ali Bongo was declared the winner of Saturday's election

at 4am local time this morning. But within an hour, the military moved in.

An unidentified spokesman read out a statement surrounded by other men in uniform.

In the name of the people of Gabon and as guarantors of the institutions,

we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.

To this end, the general elections of the 26th of August 2023 and the truncated results

are cancelled. The borders are closed until further notice.

All the institutions of the Republic are dissolved.

The president of Gabon Ali Bongo is reported to be under house arrest

and on the streets of the capital Libreville, there were scenes of jubilation.

So celebrations there, but how has the news gone down elsewhere?

A question for our correspondent in the region, Will Ross.

It's often difficult to gauge the overall popularity from what happens quickly on the

streets, but certainly people I've spoken to and from the videos that are circling there,

there is genuine joy at the news that the president has been ousted.

Advocates we've seen in West Africa, Central Africa have seen, you know, what to some eyes

look a bit like sort of orchestrated shows of support where

renter crowds are kind of brought out or at least persuaded to come out and show their support.

Whereas in this case, you're seeing men and women and quite a lot of support.

There's also been an interesting development in that a video which appears to show the

detained president Ali Bongo making an appeal in a short video for there to be lots of noise made

about his predicament and saying that he's been arrested and his wife's being held in a

different place. We haven't independently verified that video, but it certainly seems to be a video

of the deposed president making that appeal for there to be, you know, a lot of noise made around

the world and presumably to try and get support from international bodies.

And this the latest in a series of coups in the region, what is the impact?

Yes, you're right. I mean, the eighth in Western Central Africa since 2020.

I think it's going to be slightly different, I think, from other ones.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.