Disillusionment high among Chad’s voters

For Lydie Beassemda, May 6 is an important date: When Chadians head to the polls to elect a new president, the 57-year-old will also stand for election. She’s one of 10 candidates, but the only woman to vie for the most important public role in the central African country. She told DW in a recent interview that it was her father who founded the Party for Complete Democracy and Independence, making her career in politics a family affair.

“I wanted to lend a hand and offer a break to those who were there and who had grown slightly weary of the fight,” said Beassemda. Since 2018, she Beassemda been at the helm of the party.

But the cards might not be stacked in her favor on Monday. After three decades of authoritarian rule under President Idriss Deby Itno, the country saw a seamless transition of power to his son Mahamat Idriss Deby in 2021. Deby has been ruling Chad as the head of a military junta since his father’s death, and is considered most likely to win the election.

The vote is taking place under difficult circumstances. Several security issues throughout the region have also directly affected Chad, from Islamist insurgencies in the West African Sahel countries to the ongoing war in neighboring Sudan.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Sudan have settled in Chad’s eastern provinces. Amid this turmoil, European countries are also paying close attention to the events in and around the region. With European and US armed forces having been driven out of most Sahel countries and thus losing their influence in the region, the West is largely clinging to Chad as its only remaining partner.

Meanwhile, armed groups are rife in the country’s northern regions, where government control is considerably low. Residents of the north have been complaining about being forgotten by politicians; none of the 10 candidates have come to the north during their respective campaigns.

“It’s an election that concerns all Chadians, so the campaign should cover the whole country,” said tradesman Younouss Ali in the northern town of Miski, in Tibesti province.

“The president who is going to be elected will be the president of all Chadians. Unfortunately, here we are neglected, nobody is coming to explain to us why to vote or to ask us what we want or what’s on our minds.”

In the capital, N’Djamena, the political tug-of-war in the run-up to the vote has witnessed some surprising twists and turns in recent months. A standoff between Deby and his fiercest rivals in late February had the country on the brink and led to his opponent and would-be challenger Yaya Dillo being killed by security forces. Observers have described Dillo’s death as a political execution.

Meanwhile, some of the other political figures in the running saw their applications for candidature turned down by the electoral council. Deby’s most prominent challenger is Prime Minister Succes Masra.

The founder of the opposition party Les Transformateurs spearheaded a series of protests against Deby’s military junta in October 2022, which were violently suppressed by security forces. Hundreds were killed, according to a count by protesters. Masra fled the country but came back to serve as interim prime minister after a deal was struck under the auspices of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi. However, the move lost Masra a great deal of credibility among opponents to the Deby dynasty.