According to AFP, Chad’s opposition Transformers party has said that it would not contest in the country’s legislative and local elections on December 29 due to a predetermined outcome.
Succes Masra, one of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno’s sharpest opponents, claimed victory in the May presidential election, when he received 18.5% of the vote, after accusing Deby’s staff of rigging the results.
“The Transformers will not participate in the legislative elections in December,” Masra told supporters at a commemoration commemorating anti-junta protest victims two years ago.
“To participate in these elections amounts to condoning a result that has already been entered in the computers of the opposing camp,” said the 41-year-old economist, who was for a while prime minister under Deby, said.
After a new constitution was approved in a referendum in December, Deby, 40, was chosen president in May in voting that the opposition boycotted and international observers felt was not genuine.
Deby had been proclaimed transitional president by fellow army generals in 2021 after his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who had ruled Chad for 30 years, was slain in a gun duel with rebels.
Deby promised an 18-month transition to democracy but increased it by two years. Opposition figures have either left, been silenced, or joined Deby.
