who won elections last year after being propelled to power by a junta on his father’s death, has now cemented his rule with a landslide win in the senate.
After heading a three-year interim period, Deby, who turns 41 next month and was recently promoted to the rank of field marshal, won a five-year term as president last May in a vote boycotted by the opposition and described by international NGOs as “not free nor credible.”
His Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) party, founded by his longtime ruling father, won 124 of the 188 seats in the lower house of parliament and controls 23 regions following December elections.
In the final stage of the political transition, it won a similar majority in last month’s senate elections, the first such ballot held in the central African nation.
As well as winning 43 of the 46 senate seats up for grabs in the vote, the MPS party dominates the list of 23 directly appointed lawmakers.
Not since the overthrow of dictator Hissene Habre in 1990 by Deby’s iron-fisted father Idriss Deby Itno has Chad’s opposition been so absent from its political institutions.
“We are further strengthening the foundation of our democracy,” the Constitutional Council declared, releasing the final senate results on Tuesday.
But opposition leader Mahamat Zene Cherif told AFP: “We give no credit to anything that came from these elections.”
His Chad United party, like all the opposition, has urged voters to boycott the elections, predicting “prefabricated” results.
“It is very worrying that in a so-called democratic regime and a rule of law worthy of its name, all republican institutions are under the control of one party,” he said.
‘No longer any opposition’
Deby’s ruling party argues the transition period turned the political status quo on its head, resulting in some parties allying with the MPS.
“There’s no longer any opposition, the MPS has the activists and the means, it is the only one present throughout the country,” the party’s general secretary Aziz Mahamat Saleh told AFP.
“It’s only logical that it wins all the elections,” he added.
Political scientist Evariste Ngarlem Tolde said a serving president needed to command the various institutions to carry out his political programme.
However, “with all this power, there is a fear of tending towards a certain dictatorship”, the N’Djamena University researcher and lecturer added.
Constitutional expert Ahmat Mahamat Hassan said Chad had “never” seen free and fair elections.
“Power is conquered by weapons and sacrificing blood, then, once won, becomes a heritage to be preserved” with “electoral masquerades” to give it a veneer of legitimacy, he said.
Even before the senate election, the ruling party had laid out its priorities, which included bolstering peace, national reconciliation and security.
It comes against a backdrop of regional tensions over the civil war in neighbouring Sudan, incursions by Boko Haram jihadists and belligerent declarations by Chadian rebels.
Max Kemkoye, spokesman for the opposition Political Actors’ Consultation Group (GCAP), voiced concern that the political situation could now lead to “military hostilities”, especially after the withdrawal in January of forces from former colonial power France.
Like other Sahelian countries, Chad demanded that French forces pull out of the landlocked, desert nation and has recently fostered closer ties with the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Hungary.
