Celebratory gunfire rang out in the capital of the Central African nation of Chad on Thursday night after its military ruler, President Mahamat Idriss Déby, was declared the winner of a closely scheduled presidential election on national television.
Two hours before the official broadcast, his main rival, Succès Masra, the opposition leader who has been the country’s prime minister since January, had claimed a “resounding victory” after returning from exile abroad and reaching a deal. with Déby. .
But preliminary results announced by Chad’s National Electoral Management Agency showed a resounding victory for the other side. Déby, it said, obtained 61 percent of the votes and Masra 18.5 percent.
Many analysts saw the outcome of Chad’s elections as a foregone conclusion, planned by a supposedly transitional government that never intended to relinquish power.
Déby, who took power after his father and predecessor, Idriss Déby Itno, died on the battlefield in 2021, had vowed not to run in the election. But he did it, and against a field that was reduced in number by the disqualification of several prominent candidates and the shooting deaths of others two months before the vote.
The landlocked nation of about 18 million people, part of a swath of countries in Africa’s arid Sahel region ruled by a military junta after a coup, has never had free and fair elections. Civil society groups, members of the opposition and some election observers condemned the violence and fraud in Monday’s elections, and there were accusations of ballot box stuffing.
In a live broadcast on his Facebook page, Masra called on his followers to “mobilize peacefully.” “You already know the results of these elections, because they are your results,” he said, reading on a tablet, with a Chadian flag behind him. “You have voted for change.”
But anyone venturing onto the streets of N’Djamena, the capital, on Thursday night encountered a heavily armed military presence, unusual even for Chad. Eighteen months ago, dozens of protesters were killed while demanding change during protests sparked by the junta’s decision to extend its stay in power.
Mahamat Adamou contributed reporting from N’Djamena, Chad.