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A few weeks after the documentary was aired, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released a cable in which the American ambassador to Cameroon named senior Gabonese officials, including the late President and his son, as having benefitted from the embezzlement of around USD 36 million from the Bank of Central African States.

The money was claimed to have helped serve finance French political parties, including that of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, on Omar Bongo's request.

There seems to be increasing pressure on the opposition from UN officials however, to vacate the UNDP premises. Jean-pierre Rougou, a source reputed to be close to the unofficial ‘government', wrote on his social network Facebook profile:

The antigovernment demonstrators think France still pulls the strings, and while French officials deny this, their actions often suggest otherwise. In Gabon, where the election of an autocrat’s son dashed hopes for ending 40 years of rule under the Bongo family, Mr. Sarkozy’s man in Africa, Alain Joyandet, showed up at Ali Bongo’s pomp-filled inauguration, telling reporters that Mr. Bongo “must be given time.”

recently noted persistent human rights abuses by Cameroon

French officials have discouraged scrutiny of African leaders’ corruption, the fruits of which often end up in Paris. A French good-government group’s campaign to expose and recover the “ill-gotten gains” of three of the most notorious leaders — the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo Republic and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea — has been opposed by the prosecutor of the French Republic on the grounds that the group has no standing to sue, and that the facts are “ill defined.”

different kind of change is required in Cameroon, which must come on the heels of a well contrived and executed policy of education designed to transform the populace from tribal subjects to national citizens.

But Mrs. Clinton’s statement conveniently left out Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, among others. In these states the US government and American multinationals continue to cooperate with regimes that are obscenely corrupt and/or repressive for “constructive reasons.”

Senegal appears to have led the trend, with President Abdoulaye Wade establishing relations with the Libyan rebels in mid-May. Last week, Wade met with rebel leaders in Benghazi and said that Qadhafi should step down. Gambia also recognizes the rebels. Wade’s call for a transition was seconded last week by Mauritania’s Abdel Aziz, who said that Qadhafi’s “departure has become necessary...’

There’s no doubt, either, that both Libya and the Ivory Coast have reinforced many peoples’ opinion that the West will support “change” and “democracy” only when its own interests are advanced.

When you consider just how many seriously flawed African elections have gone by recently without the slightest objection from France, the U.S. or the U.N. — Gabon, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda – it’s painfully obvious that Western support for African democracy is highly selective. With all the despots who have been in power for decades in Africa, how did Gbagbo suddenly become so terrible?