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

Success Masra, formerly in the opposition, had claimed victory and denounced rigging before the announcement of the provisional official results, which awarded 61% of the votes to the outgoing head of state.

“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, succeeding his father after his death, without going to the polls. His Prime Minister, Succès Masra, largely defeated, contests this victory.

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

Masra claims victory and calls for demonstrations

Shortly after the announcement, soldiers fired small arms into the air in N’Djamena, the capital, in the district where the Succès Masra party is based. An expression of joy obviously also intended to dissuade possible gatherings, AFP journalists reported. Some residents ran to hide in their homes and the streets were quickly deserted.

Near the Presidential Palace, on the other hand, many supporters of Mahamat Idriss Déby celebrated his victory by shouting, singing and honking in their cars, some of which were covered with the Chadian flag.

Success Masra had claimed victory before the official results were announced, 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. Saying he trusted the ballot counts carried out 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.”

A protest by his supporters in the street could open the way to deadly violence, 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 assaults 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”.