Chad - 2024 Parliament Elections
Chad's ruling party won a majority of seats in the 29 December 2024 parliamentary elections that were largely boycotted by opposition parties. President Mahamat Idriss Deby's party , the Patriotic Salvation Movement, won 124 of the 188 seats in the National Assembly, electoral commission chief Ahmed Bartcherit announced 11 January 2025. Turnout was 51.56%, which opposition parties said showed voters' doubts about the legitimacy of the contest.
The December 29 election was presented by Deby Jr's party as the final stage of the country's transition to democracy after he took power as a military ruler in 2021. The takeover came after the death of President Idriss Deby Itno, who had ruled the country for three decades. Ultimately, Mahamat Deby won last year's disputed presidential election.
Parliamentary elections were last held in 2011. Although the term for the legislators was meant to end in 2015, the government indefinitely postponed polls, claiming there were no funds to organise elections. In 2019, the newly established National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) finally promised to hold elections in 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted those plans.
Following his father’s death at the hands of rebels in May 2021, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, 40, seized power, despite loud calls for elections from opposition parties. The military disbanded parliament and put a one-year Transitional Military Council in place, headed by Deby. In October 2022, the leader disappointed many Chadians when he extended the transition period to 2024. Thousands, especially youth, took to the streets in protest, but security forces opened fire on them, killing more than 100 people. Succes Masra, the young leader of the opposition Transformers Party, was at the forefront of the protests. Masra fled to the United States following the killings.
Chad, one of Africa’s poorest countries, is the first in a string of coup-hit states in the Sahel to hold elections as promised, even if polls were severely delayed. The country is no stranger to coups or repressive governments and has been ruled by the Deby family since 1991.
In June 2023, the transitional parliament adopted a preliminary draft constitution that voters approved in a December 17 referendum. Although the process was widely criticized as not fully inclusive, approximately 86 percent of voters reportedly supported the referendum, with participation rates of nearly 63 percent. Interim president Mahamat Idriss Deby issued numerous pardons during the year, including significant numbers of political prisoners. He pardoned hundreds of those detained following the October 2022 demonstrations in three waves of releases in March, May, and July.
Members of the Zaghawa, the transitional president’s ethnic group, occupied a disproportionate share of civilian and military posts, suggesting imbalances in access to opportunity and enforcement of laws guaranteeing equal protection for all. Government authorities often awarded political positions and formed alliances based largely on tribal and ethnic affiliations. Political parties and groups generally had readily identifiable regional or ethnic bases. Northerners, particularly members of the Zaghawa, were overrepresented in key institutions, including the military officer corps, elite military units, and presidential staff.
Allegations of ethnically driven recruitment by the police force raised concern over discriminatory access to security service jobs. Media reports in February 2023 reported that three-quarters of new police recruits were from small northern ethnic groups, which fueled retaliation against these groups.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or on behalf of the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers by nonstate armed groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom.
There was substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence, sexual violence, child, early, and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation/cutting; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of some ethnic groups in the south, including violent conflict between herding and farming communities.
Other violations included trafficking in persons, including forced labor; laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults that authorities enforced; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and the existence of the worst forms of child labor.
The law provided for a presumption of innocence, and for fair, timely, and public trials. The law provided defendants the right to be informed promptly and in detail of the charges against them and to be provided free interpretation. According to local media, however, these rights were seldom respected. The law provided defendants the right to consult an attorney in a timely manner, but this did not always occur. By law, indigent persons had the right to legal counsel at public expense in all cases, although according to legal experts, this seldom occurred.
The government regularly dictated the locations of opposition protests and civil society gatherings to limit their base of popular support. Authorities routinely banned gatherings and arrested organizers, and security forces used excessive force against demonstrators. The law required organizers to notify the Ministry of Public Security and Immigration five days in advance of demonstrations, although groups that provided advance notice did not always receive permission to assemble. The law also required opposition political parties to meet complicated registration requirements for party gatherings. On 12 July 2023, the government prohibited a demonstration by an opposition political party, citing the nonauthorization of the party. On August 1, Transitional President Deby signed three decrees further detailing the conditions, responsibilities, and sanctions to public gatherings and demonstrations.
In 2021, the Transitional Military Council suspended the 2018 constitution that provided citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage.
In July 2023, the National Commission Charged with the Organization of the Constitutional Referendum (CONOREC) announced the timetable for a referendum on an updated constitution. On September 16, CONOREC also announced the creation of an updated election registration roll, based on the 2021 presidential election rolls, and noted there were 8.24 million voters. Some opposition political parties, citing lack of inclusiveness and partiality, demanded a cancellation of the updated registration roll and the dissolution of CONOREC.
Media reported concerns regarding the compressed timeframe and enrollment period, from August to November 2023, which was expected to reduce political space for those opposing the new constitution. Local media and civil society groups expressed concerns regarding the short information campaign period prior to the referendum, from November to December. In December 2023, the country voted to approve a new constitution, which restored these rights.
Some opposition groups and media reported irregularities related to the December referendum vote for a new constitution, supported by the government. These irregularities included vote stuffing in favor of the oui (yes) vote, insufficient non (no) ballots, pressure on the military to vote yes, and lack of secrecy in the vote. Turnout in the capital was low, and the government announced the referendum passed on December 24 with final results certified on December 28.
The day after Idriss Deby was confirmed the president-elect in 2021, he died in a military operation; besides the December constitutional referendum vote, no elections have taken place since then. The Transitional Military Council originally announced an 18-month transition to general elections, which was later extended for 24 months until October 2024.
Mahamat Deby remained the transitional president with increased executive control to nominate and revoke members of the government and retained the right to nominate and revoke members of the transitional parliament under the de facto constitution.
There were more than 200 registered political parties, of which more than 100 were associated with the dominant Mouvement Patriotique du Salut (MPS) party. Changes to the law in 2018 complicated and increased the cost of party registration, outreach, and participation procedures. Opposition leaders attributed the changes to the government’s attempt to limit dissent. Most unarmed opposition members came from the south, while ruling transitional government members came from the north and east. As a result, opposition members often faced greater consequences for political activity, such as protesting, than groups from other areas of the country.
In late 2022, via separate decrees, the government suspended seven political opposition groups, including the Transformateurs, and civil society organizations united in a coalition known as Wakit Tama (the Time has Come). The suspension of the parties expired in January, while Wakit Tama remained suspended from operating.
In June 2023, the government issued an “international” arrest warrant for the leader of the Transformateurs, Succes Masra, who had taken refuge abroad. In November, Succes Masra returned to the country at the invitation of the government following an agreement brokered by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Human rights groups such as HRW and political think tanks expressed concerns regarding reduced political space in the run-up to the referendum citing arrests and continued detention of opposition members, but the government did authorize the Transformateurs to organize a series of political rallies throughout the south in December.
Numerous laws discouraged political participation by citizens holding political views out of alignment with the dominant MPS party. For example, opposition parties were legally barred from ownership of media outlets. The government enacted age limits on leadership of political parties, which many viewed as an effort to disqualify certain key opposition leaders. The MPS controlled state-owned television and radio stations, which many saw as granting it an unfair political advantage in a country where television and radio comprised the most effective public outreach tools.
Candidates affiliated with the MPS often used official vehicles for political campaigning, and there were reports that government employees were pressured to close their offices during campaign season to support MPS campaigning. Active membership in the MPS often conferred advantages for those wishing to hold high-level government positions. In addition, the MPS-led central government faced accusations of having appointed local and traditional chiefs in a way that rewarded allegiance to the MPS rather than respecting the traditional transmission of power via birth.
The elections in the large, mainly desert Central African nation of 18 million people, which also included municipal and regional elections, were the first in Chad in more than a decade. President Mahamat Deby said the elections would "pave the way for the era of decentralization long awaited by the Chadian people," referring to the distribution of power beyond the national government to various provincial and municipal levels. Chad’s electoral agency said there had been “record” turnout, with more than 72 percent in the army and 54 percent among nomads.
Some 8.3 million registered voters of the country’s 18-million population could vote for legislators in the country’s 188-seat parliament. Parties need 95 seats for a majority. More than 100 political parties put forward some 1,100 candidates for the parliamentary elections. Winners are elected by a first-past-the-post or a more-than-half majority method, depending on the constituency size. Voters also chose regional and local governments across 22 regions and the capital, N’Djamena.
Opposition parties urged Chad’s eight million voters to shun elections whose results they said had been decided in advance. More than 10 opposition parties boycotted the elections, including the Change Movement Party, whose candidate, Sokseye Masra, came in second in the presidential election. The main opposition described the election as a "charade" and expressed fears it would be a repeat of the presidential election, which election monitors said was not credible. Succes Masra, leader of the opposition Transformers party, said: “The fabricated results are already in the computers.”
“It will be difficult to have a credible election without inclusivity,” Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s country director in neighbouring Nigeria, told Al Jazeera. “That some are boycotting the election shows that there must be a review of the process and system to ensure that a level playing field is provided to accommodate all Chadians.”
The boycott left the field open for candidates aligned with President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who was brought to power by the military in 2021 and then legitimised in a presidential election in May. Opposition candidates denounced this election as fraudulent. “I urge all my compatriots on the electoral roll to come out and vote en masse,” Deby posted on Facebook, alongside photos of himself casting his ballot on what he called a “historic day”.
The vote came at a critical time for Chad, which faces a host of security challenges, from attacks by the militant group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region to the end of decades of military cooperation with its former colonial power, France. The severing of military ties reflects recent moves by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which have all expelled French forces and fostered closer ties with Russia after a series of coups in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa.
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