Results of Chad’s parliamentary election last month showed President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s ruling Patriotic Liberation Movement (MPS) winning a majority.
While opposition parties boycotted the election, Déby and his government have described it as the final step in the transition to democracy.
What do we know about elections
The National Election Management Agency (ANGE) said Deby’s MPS won 124 of the 188 seats in the country’s National Assembly, with a participation rate of 51.56%.
Agency head Ahmed Bartchiret said 38 political groups would be represented in the assembly after province-by-province results are presented on Saturday. However, it was unclear how parliamentary seats would be divided among non-MPS representatives.
Opposition leader Success Masra’s Transformers Party and several others boycotted the election, saying it lacked transparency and would be unfair, a charge the government denied.
How did Debbie become president?
Deby was elected president in another vote in May, three years after declaring herself interim leader. The announcement came after rebels assassinated his father, who was president for three decades, in the battlefield of the northern Chad offensive in 2021.
Since his election, Chad has ended its defense cooperation agreement with France and threatened to leave the regional security force.
The severing of military ties with Paris is also being echoed in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which have expelled all troops from former colonial power France and are moving closer to Russia.
The Chadian government said security forces this week had repelled an attack on the presidential palace in what it described as an “attempt to destabilize.”
rc/ab (AFP, Reuters, AP)
