Chad’s incumbent candidate, Idriss Déby Itno, cast his vote on Wednesday in presidential elections boycotted by opposition parties and shadowed by Sudan-backed rebels committed to toppling Déby from power.
Virtually certain of victory, Déby hailed the fact that the elections were going ahead despite the boycott and repeated clashes with United Front for Change (FUC) rebels, who launched an attack on the capital N’djamena from their base along the Sudan border less than three weeks before the vote.
“The most important thing is that we have kept our promise by holding these elections on May 3, as required by the Constitution,” Déby said as he dropped his ballot into a box at a polling station set up inside the ministry of agriculture.
Déby insisted that Chadians would not shun the polls and said that “hundreds and hundreds of men and women” were turning out to cast ballots.
The country’s main opposition leaders, however, are boycotting the vote, as they did the 2005 constitutional referendum, making it possible for Déby to run for a third term of office.
The opposition claims that Déby has built a regime based on clans and corruption and that he is syphoning off oil earmarked for the development of his desperately poor nation.
The Coordination of Political Parties for Defence of the Constitution, the main opposition grouping, had called for the vote to be postponed.
Pointing to the instability caused by rebel attacks and the crisis in Sudan’s neighbouring Darfur region, civil society groups, Chadian bishops, the African Union and the United States all more or less supported this position.
The other four presidential candidates are aligned with Déby and are part of his government.
FUC leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim, meanwhile, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that his rebel forces would not foment any violence in the capital on election day, though he would not exclude actions in other regions of the country.
Mahamat recently forged a temporary alliance with Chad’s other main rebel group, the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy, calling for a national boycott of the elections and vowing to continue “periodic military actions”.
FUC is widely believed by international observers to be actively backed by the government of neighbouring Sudan.
Some 5,8-million voters, out of a population of 8,8-million, are eligible to cast ballots at 11 800 polling stations, which will be open from 7am until 6pm local time.
Déby (54), a former rebel leader who seized power in 1990 with the overthrow of Hissene Habre, was elected in 1996 after introducing a multi-party system and re-elected five years later in a poll that was criticised by the opposition but not boycotted by it.
The other candidates vying for the presidency include Agriculture Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke of the National Rally of Chadian Democrats, and Mahamat Abdoulaye of the Movement for Peace and Development in Chad.
The other two contenders are Kassire Coumakoye, prime minister from 1993 to 1995, who is the representative of the National Rally for Democracy and Progress, part of the government, while Brahim Koulamallah of the Renewed African Socialist Movement is little known to the public.
In the unlikely event that Déby does not win outright in the first round, a run-off is scheduled for June 8.
Vote counting was expected to begin on Wednesday evening when polling stations close, but official results will not be made public until May 14. — AFP