junta leader Mahamat Déby elected, but his Prime Minister contests the results

Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, 40, collected 61.03% of the votes, according to the provisional official results of the electoral commission he had appointed, against 18.53% for Succès Masra.

“I am now the elected president of all Chadians”. General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno was declared the winner of the presidential election in Chad on Thursday May 8, three years after taking power at the head of a military junta. His defeated Prime Minister Succès Masra contests this victory.

Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, 40 years old, collected 61.03% of the votes, according to the provisional official results of the electoral commission he had appointed, against 18.53% for Succès Masra, also 40 years old. The participation rate officially stood at 75.89%. These counts must still be validated by the Constitutional Council, which was also appointed by the head of the junta.

Accusation of rigged results

Shortly after the announcement, soldiers fired small arms into the air in N’Djamena in the neighborhood where the Succès Masra party is based, out of joy but also clearly to dissuade people from gathering, reports said. AFP journalists. Some residents ran to hide in their homes and the streets were quickly deserted. It was the opposite near the Presidential Palace, many Déby supporters celebrated his victory by shouting and singing and honking in their cars, some of which were covered with the Chadian flag.

Success Masra had claimed victory before the proclamation of the official results in a long speech on Facebook where he accused the Déby camp in advance of having rigged the results to announce the general’s victory. Citing the compilation of ballot counts by his own supporters, he called on Chadians to “don’t let victory be robbed of you” and to the “prove” in “mobilizing peacefully, but firmly.”

If Masra’s supporters protest in the streets, this could open the way to deadly violence, with opposition demonstrations being systematically repressed in this country marked, since its independence from France in 1960, by coups d’état, authoritarian regimes and the regular onslaught of a multitude of rebellions. The International Federation for Human Rights was concerned on May 3 about a “election which seems neither credible, nor free, nor democratic”, “in a deleterious context marked by (…) the multiplication of human rights violations”.