President Omar Bongo of Gabon, one of Africa's longest serving dictators died in a Spanish hospital on Monday. He ruled that oil-rich country for 42 years. He was 73.

His wife, Edith Lucie, died two months earlier, on March 14, 2009 in Rabat, Morocco, after a prolonged illness, at the age of 45. Bongo's death marked the end of the era of post-colonial rulers who hung on to power in spite of democratisation movement that swirled around them, and plundered the national resources in the process. In fact Bongo died at a time when his government was involved in a row with French authorities over an inquiry into luxury properties Bongo allegedly purchased in France. It followed allegations that the properties were acquired with embezzled state funds; his French bank accounts were ordered frozen.

In June 2007, when French NGOs Survie and Sherpa accused Bongo, along with Presidents Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo, Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equitorial Guinea, and Edouardo dos Santos of Angola, of corruption and using public funds to acquire lavish properties in France; they denied any wrongdoing.

Bongo was considered one of the wealthiest heads of state in the world, skimmed mostly from oil revenue. He name has turned up in recent years during French criminal inquiries into hundreds of millions of Euros of illicit payments said to have been made by the French oil giant, Elf Aquitaine. One Elf representative testified that the company was making kickbacks of 50million Euros per year to Bongo for the privilege exploit the petrol lands of Gabon. Similarly in 2005, an investigation by the United States Senate Indian Affairs committee into fund-raising irregularities by the disgraced American lobbyist Jack Abramoff revealed that he arranged a meeting between former US President George W Bush and Bongo in 2004 for a fee of $9million. Ten months later, Bongo met Bush in the Oval Office.

France was complicit in Bongo's 42-year reign; the quid pro quo for the deal with Elf to exploit Gabon's oil wells was Paris' offer of a de facto guarantee for Bongo to hold on to power indefinitely. France maintained military bases in the country and a contingent of paratroopers whose presence cast an intimidating shadow over Bongo's political opposition. He seemed to place more faith in the ability of the French to protect him and his powerbase than he trusted his countrymen. That siege mentality prompted Bongo to appoint his son, Ali-Ben, defence minister, and daughter, Pascaline, foreign minister and then chef de cabinet.

Ensconced in French military hardware and the latest Mirage jet fighters to commemorate Bongo's 40 years in power in 2007, posters extolled what the government claimed were its four pillars, of peace, unity, stability and progress; critics argued that massive corruption and rigged polls had eroded those claims.

On the other hand, Bongo is credited with maintaining peace in the country in a period when most of its neighbours were embroiled in political turmoil; but the Gabonese economy was left in a shambles. The country's oil output has been in decline since mid- 1990s, while corruption among government officials became rampant. Some economists estimate that Gabon will run out of crude oil in 30 years. The critical issue here is whether Bongo and his cohorts invested proceeds from years of oil exploitation to prepare the Gabonese economy for the day it would be running on empty. There is not sufficient infrastructure, apart from a rail network, that wise expenditures during the oil boom could have built to justify Bongo's long rein. We commiserate with the people and Government of Gabon, and urge interim President Rose Francine Rogombe to organise free and fair elections in the shortest possible time, and in launch a process of introducing multiparty democracy that gives a voice to the opposition. This is important in order to prevent the country, which has known no other political since independence in 1967, from descending into chaos.