Chadian President Idriss Deby vowed on Saturday to fight any challenge to his authority as he celebrated 15 years in power, amid desertions and declarations of rebellion by senior army officers.
”We will fight any threat that arises against the security of citizens and the stability of the republic’s institutions,” he said in a speech in his birth town to mark the anniversary.
”I will never let myself be confronted by winds and tides, balk at reefs and manoeuvres, conjure up dangers and false temptations,” he said to a crowd of several thousand.
Deby (53), a onetime rebel leader who seized power in 1990 and has been elected in multiparty polls since, has faced a wave of desertions since October as part of a movement calling for his resignation.
Earlier on Saturday, a group of army officers said it had deserted and was grouping in the east of the country to fight Deby.
”Overnight on December 7 2005, a big group of soldiers, all disgusted and shocked by the regime of Idriss Deby — that is 349 well-armed men … broke ranks with the shameful regime of Deby and took refuge in the east of the country to fight him,” they said in a statement received by Agence France-Presse in Libreville.
The statement said the deserters included 82 senior officers, including Colonel Ali Orozi.
The number of deserters has been impossible to evaluate with conflicting claims from both sides.
The Chadian Defence Department said early last month that 86 soldiers who deserted in October had regrouped in the east as part of a movement calling for Deby’s resignation.
The rebel force, dubbed Scud, has claimed to have several hundred army deserters in its ranks.
After that wave of desertions, mainly from Deby’s Republican Guard, he dissolved that whole wing of the armed services. Men of the guard, whose troops had been drawn from the president’s Zaghawa ethnic group, were allegedly behind a foiled coup against him in May last year.
The unrest overshadowed the anniversary ceremonies as a military parade was called off and the four heads of state who had been invited — from Nigeria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Congo — did not attend.
A source at the Presidency said they had been advised to stay away on account of ”the situation in the east”. — Sapa-AFP