LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Six months into his administration, Gabon's President Ali Bongo is struggling at home to implement his reformist agenda, while presenting an investor-friendly international face.

Bongo won an election last year on a pledge to turn Gabon into an emerging economy, replacing his late father who ruled the central African country for four decades. Opponents said the vote was unfair and accused Bongo and the ruling PDG party of imposing a dynasty.

Bongo has made reforming government and lessening the country's dependence on oil his priorities. For years the country of just over a million people has laboured under a bloated bureaucracy and government run on a system of patronage, giving ministers and officials little incentive to work.

Gabonese people say they have become used to government that does not govern, but Bongo's team wants to change this.

"The real problem is ... fighting the old system. The objective is to say, 'here is a new system to induce people to execute measures'," said an adviser to the president.

Part of that system will be a performance review, due to take place within the next month, when Bongo will ask ministers to show their achievements. A short-lived strike earlier in April by oil workers brought output almost to a standstill, and has focused attention on the oil ministry.

"The oil strike means it's more pressure on the ministry of hydrocarbons," the adviser said.

REFORMS HELD UP

Bongo -- or 'Ali', as most Gabonese refer to him -- is a reformer who has trimmed the number of ministries and is streamlining the civil service. Still, analysts say he is having a tough time dragging inefficient government bodies with him and needs outside assistance to make his ideas work.

"There are lots of good ideas and reforms announced, but there is not enough technical capacity, there is not a culture of implementation," said one Western diplomat.

The opposition, which squandered a chance to really test loyalty to the PDG in the 2009 election when it fielded around 20 candidates and splintered support, is beginning to coalesce.

A new party, the National Union, brings together five of the presidential hopefuls, but heavyweight Pierre Mamboundou and his UPG party are outside it, and in the run-up to by-elections for around a dozen seats in June, it is not gaining critical mass.

"Ali Bongo wants to reign without sharing," said Joseph Nambo, a member of the National Union, who argued that Bongo won the election illegitimately, and thus has no mandate to govern.

"Almost seven months after he took power, Gabon has made a great leap backwards in all aspects," Nambo said.

Still, an opposition based on challenging the 2009 election fails to engage the public. Trouble flared only very briefly after the election result was announced, and passions are unlikely to be stirred by the same protests almost a year later.

Most Gabonese, when asked if they have complaints about Bongo's administration, say they disagree with a law that compels the tin-topped roadside bars, as popular in Libreville as they are all over Africa, to close at 10 p.m.

"This is not a polarised country, politics is not a matter of life and death," the diplomat said. "June is an opportunity for the opposition to make its case to the public, but it's already late April and we've seen nothing in the way of a campaign."

"YES, YES, YES"

Neither foreign delegations nor people close to Bongo see the June vote as a particularly tough test for the president, who continues to push a pro-investment policy that encourages diversification from oil, the country's economic mainstay.

"Any operator who can bring something to the country will be allowed to invest, it's an open door policy," the presidential adviser said."

Still, potential investors say the sluggish pace of work in the torpid tropical capital, and the bureaucratic entanglements it involves, make doing business a headache.

"It's so slow," said a visiting foreign executive in the agriculture sector. "People say 'yes, yes, yes' then you go away and nothing happens."

Bongo's team argues the reforms they say the country needs are a long-term project.

"If it were that easy, it would have been done before. He's only been president for six months," said the presidential adviser. "It takes time, it can take more than a mandate."