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Turnout low as Gabon votes amid opposition boycott

Voters trickled to the polls in Gabon Saturday in legislative elections expected to hand a resounding victory to President Ali Bongo's party in the face of a boycott by some opposition groups. Bongo's Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) and its allies hold 98 of the 120 seats in parliament in the west African oil state and are not expected to lose much ground given the splintered opposition. Results are due Thursday. Polling stations closed at 1700 GMT, although some shut earlier because of the low turnout and a lack of electricity as darkness fell. At two polling stations in the capital Libreville, for instance, only 61 people cast ballots out of 704 registered voters, according to Germaine Mianga of the election commission. In the western economic capital of Port-Gentil only 78 of the nearly 500 registered voters turned up at one polling station. Poll officials in the northern town of Medouneu, an opposition bastion, said turnout at various stations hovered between 10 and 40 percent. In the first legislative election since his father Omar died in 2009 after 41 years in power, Bongo, 52, has campaigned on his economic achievements and the co-hosting of the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations with Equatorial Guinea, an event that has spurred major investment. "It's a citizen's duty to go and vote, but it's true it's not very crowded," said voter Antoinette Ntsame-Sima at a polling station in Medouneu, the stronghold of leading opposition figure Andre Mba Obame. Many eyes were on Medouneu, where Mba Obame won 96 percent of the vote in the 2009 presidential election which brought Bongo to power, to see whether voters would observe the boycott. PDG candidate Maxime Ondimba is facing off against Claude-Guy Assey of the Rally for Gabon -- part of the presidential majority supporting Bongo -- for the seat vacated by Mba Obame, who is ill and undergoing medical treatment in France. Mba Obame's supporters went out in small groups in Medouneu to urge people not to vote, prompting an outburst from the town's mayor Pauline Ossone of the PDG. "They are trying to scare people so that they won't vote. Even little old ladies! It's unacceptable," Ossone charged. The private channel TV+ belonging to Mba Obame had its programmes interrupted late Saturday due to sabotage, a director of the network told AFP. "We were off the air for a second time since 8:05 pm (1905 GMT). A cable was severed. It was sabotage," Franck Nguema said adding that transmission could only resume on Monday. Reached by telephone earlier in Paris, Mba Obame said: "Today they will say that they took Andre Mba Obame's seat. It's true they will have a deputy, but they haven't taken my seat. They don't represent anyone." A total of 746,000 people are registered to vote in the country of 1.5 million inhabitants, sub-Saharan Africa's fourth largest oil producer. Despite the recent emergence of a middle class, disparities are huge, with more than half of the population living on less than two dollars a day. Inspired by the Arab Spring and a string of protest movements against long-standing rulers in sub-Saharan Africa, Gabon's opposition initially looked to be mounting a serious challenge, but it was split over the boycott issue. Mba Obame's supporters joined forces with 12 other opposition parties in November to reject the elections over the absence of biometric polling materials. A number of ruling party dissidents joined opposition ranks in recent years in a bid to push for more democracy, but the PDG old guard that once protected Omar Bongo's status as Africa's longest-serving leader appears to have won the day. "The PDG runs Gabon. We have to vote for Ondimba because if you vote for him, the president (Bongo) will trust us and we'll have schools, roads and everything," said Nestor Aboghe, a PDG supporter.