03 May 2006: ISS Today: Chad Vote Goes Ahead Despite Rebel Threat, Boycott
03 MAY 2006: CHAD VOTE GOES AHEAD DESPITE REBEL THREAT, BOYCOTT
PASCAL FLETCHER, REUTERS
Chad holds a one-sided election on Wednesday expected to keep President Idriss Deby in power, but opposition parties are shunning it as a farce and rebels have threatened attacks to disrupt voting. Deby, an ex-army chief who seized control of the former French colony in 1990 and won elections in 1996 and 2001, is seen easily winning a third five-year term because he faces no serious challenge from four other contenders who are mostly government allies.
Commentary
Despite rebel threats, an opposition boycott and the appeals of many members of the international community to delay the presidential elections due today, Chad’s President Idriss Déby has resolved to proceed as planned. He will face four other contenders, two of them ministers in his own government and two from parties allied to the presidential majority in the legislature. The result, due to be announced on 14 May, is a foregone conclusion and will bestow the most flimsy of electoral legitimacies on the incumbent.
At present this appears to be of little concern to President Déby. In mid-April his forces, with the indirect assistance of the French garrison in Chad, successfully repelled a rebel raid on the capital N’Djamena, in a clash that left numerous casualties, but Déby in undisputed control of the city and of other centres. The rebels claim that they carried out a tactical withdrawal, but this sounds unconvincing, and they have been left in no doubt that Paris does not intend to watch idly while forces strongly suspected of enjoying Khartoum’s support overthrow the Chadian government, however clannish or corrupt.
In recent days, as Déby wound up his electoral campaign, he made it quite clear that he regarded his principal opponent at the polls as his erstwhile ally, President Omar el-Beshir of Sudan. He also offered an olive branch to the opposition, including those in rebellion, suggesting talks with all loyal Chadians and the possibility of amnesty and reconciliation.
The opposition and many of the rebels demanded that national dialogue precede any elections. Déby, well aware of the fate that awaits minority leaders who surrender the initiative to national conventions, refused, thus rejecting the role even of primus inter pares.
His recent spat with the World Bank now seems close to at least a temporary resolution, on terms favourable to the Chadian government, which will now have access to additional oil funds with which to purchase military equipment to improve its advantage over the numerous rebel forces, which lack the means to counter helicopter gunships.
No doubt the actual electoral turnout will be disappointing, whatever the official statistics maintain. But there will be many, in Chad and in France, who buy into the implied alternative of either continued rule by Déby, or prolonged and bloody chaos inspired by Sudanese surrogates.
Richard Cornwell
