Chad - 2024 Elections [or Coup??]
Presidential, legislative, senatorial and municipal elections are scheduled for 2024. Chad's transitional president, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, who seized power in 2021 after his father and long-term ruler Idriss Deby was killed while fighting insurgents, will be allowed to run for president under the new constitution.
Africa and in particular the Sahel region has seen coup after coup in recent years in fact these coups have even been described as contagious meaning that every coup seems to increase the likelihood of another country falling. Chad's latest move toward civilian rule appears to set it apart from its politically unstable neighbors in the Sahel region. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are all under military rule. Chad is one of the Sahel's few remaining Western allies, and has been at a point of relative stability sandwiched between War in Sudan in the East and Western Sahel countries struggling with escalating islamist insurgencies. Chad's collapse would open a bridge that merges the flow of fighters, weapons and violence between these two regions.
For more than three decades - from 1990 to 2021 - Chad was led by Idris Deby, who in 2021 was killed in combat while visiting troops on the front line fighting against an armed rebellion. Under the constitution, the president of Chad's National Assembly should have become interim president and held elections. But a military junta led by the late president's son Mahamad Deby seized power and suspended the constitution. This coup was met with little condemnation from neighboring countries.
France even defended the military takeover, calling it exceptional circumstances and since the younger debb took over Chad continued to be a close partner of France. France had fallen out of favor after coups in its nearby ex-colonies like Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.
The newly instated military junta pledged to keep an 18-month transition period towards elections and civilian rule, but this was delayed 2 years and Mahamad Deby was sworn in as president and permitted to run in a future election.
France's military presence leaves Deby in an increasingly difficult position. France had several thousand troops stationed in Chad including troops that were redeployed there after being withdrawn from Niger and other Western African countries that ordered them out. These French forces are there to train the Chadian military as well as use the country as a base to assist with and carry out anti-insurgency operations.
Idris Deby was a close ally of France whose support played an important role in his regime's longevity. France viewed him as a security partner and a bullwark against islamist extremism, which helped allay concerns about democracy and repression. French president Emanuel Macron even traveled to Chad for Idris Dwebbi's funeral, where he sat next to the new president. Macron declared that France would not tolerate any threats to Chad's stability or Integrity. While French support seems essential to the young Deby's survival it could also end up being his downall. Like many francophone countries in the region, Chad was seeing a rise in anti French sentiment sparking protests and calls from opposition figures for French troops to leave the country. Resentment of the French military presence could make it easier for opposition forces or dissident factions within the regime to mobilize against Deby. The French presence then is a sword of Damocles hanging over Deby's succession.
A second factor threatening Deby's position is the adoption of a new Constitution which was proposed voted on in a referendum in December 2023. A total of 86% of voters approved the new constitution on a turnout of 63%. The new Constitution championed by the government will kept Chad as a unitary non-federal state. But this has been a major point of contention among opponents many of whom boycotted the referendum saying that the transitional government had too tightly controlled the process.
Opponents of the Constitution demanded a federal system granting greater territorial autonomy than a unitary state, one and said the public should have been able to vote on their preferred form of government before being asked to approve a new constitution.
Deby would be able to run in this year's election and he signed a reconciliation agreement with an opposition party allowing for the return of its exiled leader who then since joined Deby's government. Rather than pacifying the opposition this may have just papered over the cracks. Several other opposition factions distanced themselves from mazra and are particularly angry about the part of the agreement which granted an amnesty covering those involved in October 2012 black Thursday which saw the police and military crack down on protests killing hundreds.
The thrid challange facing Deby is the prospect of the country's Zaghawa elite turning against him. Since 1990 power in Chad has been concentrated in the hands of the military elite, dominated by the Zaghawa, a non-Arab ethnic group from Eastern Chad that makes up only a small proportion of the country's population. In fact this military Elite helped to install Mahamat Deby following the death of his father, who was Zagar himself, but their continued support is far from guaranteed especially if Deby is no longer the best way to safe guard their power.
This is where neighboring Sudan comes into play. Sudan had been in crisis since April 2023 when Civil War erupted between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary rapid support forces or RSF. Officially Chad is neutral in the conflict, but in reality it's far more complex. One of the RSF's key backers Is the United Arab Emirates who have been channeling military supplies to the RSF via Chad. This cooperation with the UAE in support for the RSF is thought to be financially beneficial to Chad but it puts Deby on a collision course with his country's own Zaghawa elite, who are no fans of the RSF.
Since the conflict in Sudan broke out in 2023, the largely Arab RSF militia have been accused of carrying out brutal violence against non-Arab people in Sudan's Darfur region, including ethnic Zaghawas. It is no surprise that Chad's Zaghawa elite want Deby's government to back the Zaghawa militias in Darfur that since November 2023 have been fighting against the RSF. The dire humanitarian crisis caused by the Suadan war was also putting pressure on Chad. More than half a million refugees from Sudan have fled across the border, according to the UN's migration agency. As a country that already had one of the highest rates of hunger in the world, Chad was struggling to deal with this new refugee crisis, even with the help of international Aid agencies.
All of the factors contributing the intensification of conditions which have often predicated other coups in the region - rising anti-French sentiment, increasing insecurity and economic difficulty, inter Elite feuding and outside pressures all point to Chad being the next country to succumb to a coup.
Authorities in Chad cleared 10 candidates for this year’s long-awaited presidential election, barring two fierce opponents of the military government from standing. Chad’s Constitutional Council announced on 22 March 2024 that outspoken opposition figures Nassour Ibrahim Neguy Koursami and Rakhis Ahmat Saleh would be barred. It said their applications had been rejected because they included “irregularities”. The council said that the nominations of interim President Mahamat Idriss Deby and the country’s recently-appointed Prime Minister Succes Masra had been accepted.
The barring of the opposition candidates comes less than a month after General Deby’s main rival Yaya Dillo Djerou was shot dead in an army assault on his PSF party headquarters. In early March, Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation into the murder of Dillo, arguing that the army assault “raises serious concerns about the environment for elections scheduled for May”.
The central African nation was scheduled to hold the first round of a presidential election on May 6 and the second round on June 22, with provisional results on July 7. The elections are part of a transition back to democracy from rule by Chad’s military government, which is one of several currently in power in West and Central Africa.
Chad’s constitutional council has confirmed Mahamat Idriss Deby as the winner of the May 6 presidential election after dismissing challenges by two losing candidates – cementing a victory that extended his family’s decades-long rule. Deby, who seized power the day rebels killed his father President Idriss Deby in 2021 and declared himself interim leader, got 61 percent of the vote, well ahead of second-placed candidate Succes Masra with 18.54 percent, the council said.
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