Polls opened in Chad on Monday as the country votes in a presidential election, which analysts say incumbent military leader, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who seized power after the death of his father three years ago, is likely to win.
Some 8.5 million registered voters in the country of nearly 18 million began casting their ballots at 7 am (GMT+1) in different polling centres on Monday, a day after soldiers had started voting. The polls close at 5 pm N’Djamena time, with provisional results expected in two weeks and final outcome on June 5.
A second round will be held on June 22, in case no candidate wins with more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
Though there are ten candidates in the election, the race to occupy the country’s highest office, analysts say, is a two-horse race between the junta leader and his prime minister, Succes Masra, with Deby predicted to give his challenger a first-round knockout.
Dr Evariste Ngarlem Tolde, a political scientist and researcher at the University of N’Djamena, says the junta leader would win the polls.
“There is no election; this is a selection with already known results...the election would hardly go into the second round, except they want to pretend to make it look democratic.”
A former fierce critic of the N’Djamena regime, Masra was appointed Prime Minister of the transition government in January following his return from exile. He has been attracting large crowds in the capital N’Djamena since campaigns kicked off.
However, other opposition leaders, including Albert Pahimi Padacke, a former prime minister and regular contender, who came in second in the country’s previous election which Deby’s father, Idriss Deby Itno, won in April 2021 before he was killed, have accused Masra of collaborating with Deby the son.
Dr Tolde agrees that Masra’s candidacy is a farce for a make-believe democracy to legitimise the Deby dynasty.
“The result of this election will hardly reflect the votes of electors. We saw it during the referendum [in December 2023], where polling stations were deserted but they said participation rate was 66 percent,” he said.
The said referendum endorsed a revised constitution, which has been heavily criticised as it gave the junta leader the leverage to run for the ongoing election, which if he easily wins as predicted, could potentially make the country a family business.
Deby seized power in a military coup in April 2021 following the death of his father who rebels killed at the battlefield shortly after winning an election to extend his three-decades rule of the country.
Deby the son initially pledged to return power to democratic rule within 18 months but later extended it by two years. Now he is on course to becoming the country’s civilian president.
Chad has been in turmoil since independence and Mohamed Kheir Omer an African writer and researcher based in Norway thinks a victory for another Deby, could further plunge the country that has never experienced a peaceful electoral transition of power into more violence.
“The results of the elections [Deby’s victory] may lead to more violence as there is at present a family feud among the Zaghawa who have dominated the military and politics in the country, though they are less than one percent of Chad’s population,” Mr Omer said.
