With the words ‘I am my father’s son but I am not my father’, Gabon’s victorious presidential candidate Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba tried to make his personal ‘rupture’ with the past amid a bitterly contested election and its bloody aftermath over the past two weeks. Son of the late President Omar Bongo Ondimba and former Defence Minister, Ali Bongo started with the advantages of incumbency, election financing from his sister Pascaline and the public relations services of Britain’s Bell Pottinger. Rival presidential candidates André Mba Obame and Pierre Mamboundou are challenging Ali’s win in the courts but they failed to rally their supporters on the streets. Despite an impressive showing in the oil city of Port Gentil and feisty campaigning in the private media, the opposition was too divided to face down the Bongo dynasty. Few believe that the Libreville supreme court will annul the result before the inauguration on 20 September. So what sort of rupture does Ali Ben have in mind? He insists he is serious about reform. The first target is likely to be Libreville’s unwieldy government. There is talk about Gabon’s poor contracts on the Belinga iron ore project; then there is the poisonous aftermath of the uranium exploitation by France’s Areva, which may be the subject of another class action. In January next year, Gabon is tipped to be one of the African non-permanent members of the UN Security Council: so what chance a push for political and corporate accountability?