She’s the face of L’Oreal and has sashayed down the runway for top designers like Emanuel Ungaro. Now model Gloria Mika is leading a movement for fair elections in her native Gabon.
The 29-year-old cover girl born to a Greek mother and Gabonese father has spent the last few weeks on the phone, writing e-mails and responding to enquiries on her “Guardian Angels for Gabon” blog.
Mika, who stands a statuesque 1.88m, left Gabon when she was 16, when Omar Bongo was already in power for two decades and showed no signs of leaving.
Africa’s longest serving leader, Bongo died in June after more than four decades in office and Gabon is set to choose his successor on Aug. 30.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Let the candidates be fair players ... Let the people of Gabon be the real winners,” Mika said her aim was to “make some noise” before the vote.
A star of the catwalk, she decided to get involved after watching too many of her expatriate Gabonese friends shrug their shoulders over the fate of their country. They see Bongo’s son, Ali, as the anointed leader.
“Some people are convinced that the election has already been decided,” Mika said. “I say this can’t be. We are supposed to be living in a democratic country, not a monarchy.”
After some soul-searching, Mika decided late one night to create the “Guardian Angels for Gabon” group on Facebook and was surprised to find the following morning that some 50 people had signed up.
“I thought to myself ‘This is great, I’m not alone,’” she said.
She then created a blog to mobilize supporters with a call to postpone the election and ensure the conditions were right for a fair vote. Failing that, she is trying to recruit volunteers to be the “Guardian Angels” of Gabon’s democracy by acting as vote monitors.
“If we wait until after the election to do something, it will be too late. Now is the time to act,” Mika said.
So far, she has recruited about 30 volunteers who, moved by her appeals, are willing to be out on watch on voting day and a Gabonese NGO has contacted her about possibly providing some 3,000 “Guardian Angels.”
Mika is also concerned about the registration process for the vote, even though she acknowledges that she has no proof of irregularities.
A parttime student who lives in Athens, Mika was on holiday in Paris when she decided to launch her campaign for democracy in Gabon.
After spending some time looking at cases of election fraud, Mika insists that the final tally from every polling station must be photographed to avoid vote-tampering.
She also says the number of votes cast must be verified to see if they match the number of eligible voters.
Mika is working closely with Ushahidi, an information-sharing platform created in Kenya last year to encourage citizen involvement in African crises.
“It’s time to show everyone that we are moving on. Having a democratic and transparent transition in Gabon would send a strong message to Africa,” she said.
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