2024-03-02 10:59:27
Unsurprisingly, transitional president Mahamat Idriss Déby announced on Saturday that he was a candidate for the May 6 presidential election in Chad. The young general was proclaimed transitional president by the army at the head of a junta of generals in April 2021, upon the announcement of the death of his father, Marshal Idriss Déby Itno.
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The Chadian transitional president, General Mahamat Idriss Déby, announced on Saturday March 2 that he will be a candidate in the presidential election scheduled for May 6.
“I, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, am a candidate for the 2024 presidential election under the banner of the coalition of parties For a United Chad,” he declared in a speech, following 221 movements claimed by this coalition asked him to introduce himself.
This announcement comes three days following the army killed Mahamat Idriss Déby’s main rival, Yaya Dillo Djerou – an “assassination” according to the opposition.
On April 20, 2021, Mahamat Idriss Déby, then a young general of 37 years, was proclaimed by the army transitional president at the head of a junta of 15 generals, upon the announcement of the death of his father, Marshal Idriss Déby Itno. The patriarch then ruled this vast Sahelian country with an iron fist for more than thirty years.
Mahamat Idriss Déby immediately promised to return power to civilians through elections following an 18-month transition, but when this term expired, he extended it by two years.
“Dynastic succession”
The opposition denounced a “dynastic succession” of the Débys in this vast Sahelian state in Central Africa, the second least developed country in the world according to the UN.
The date of the first round of the presidential election, May 6, was announced only on Tuesday, a little more than two months before the vote, which looks promising for General Déby, almost 40 years old, in the absence of a serious rival in a muzzled or violently repressed opposition.
On Wednesday, accusing him of having fomented an “assassination attempt” of the President of the Supreme Court ten days earlier and an attack once morest the all-powerful intelligence services the day before, the army killed in the assault from the headquarters of his Socialist Party without Borders (PSF), Yaya Dillo Djérou, cousin and main rival of the head of state in the presidential race.
Read alsoChad: who was the opponent Yaya Dillo Djerou, killed by security forces?
In his speech delivered inside a Ministry of Foreign Affairs protected by an imposing military presence, Mahamat Déby, white boubou and hat, army command baton in hand, proclaimed that in 2021, “the “The army had ensured the continuity of the State and saved the country from nothingness and chaos.” Under the cheers of hundreds of representatives of the “221 parties” claimed by the Coalition for a United Chad which called on him to run.
HRW calls for an “international investigation”
Apart from the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) created by his father following his coup d’état in 1990, the other movements are small, or even very small, satellite parties.
On Saturday, the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) once once more denounced the violent repression of the opposition by the junta by calling for an “international investigation”, with “foreign aid”, into the “murder” of Yaya Dillo Djerou.
“The circumstances of Yaya Dillo’s murder are unclear, but her violent death illustrates the dangers facing opposition politicians in Chad, particularly in the run-up to elections,” said Lewis Mudge, director for the Central Africa at HWR.
HRW said it had “examined several photos transmitted by a reliable source close to Dillo, showing him dead and bearing the impact of a single bullet in the head.”
“The transitional government (…) has, on several occasions, violently repressed demonstrations organized by the opposition to demand a civilian democratic regime,” deplores HRW.
The goal “is to eliminate me physically”, “so as not to go to the election”, he assured Wednesday on the telephone from the HQ of his besieged party.
If the absence for the moment of any serious rival in the presidential election suggests an easy victory, concerns have been emerging for several months in the camp of Mahamat Déby regarding an increasingly marked discord within the family clan and the Zaghawa ethnic group of the Débys.
Very much a minority in the country, it has been in control of the military and the State for 33 years. Fears crystallized in particular in the rivalry of Yaya Dillo, nephew of the late Marshal Déby.
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