Elections of December 29: Why Chad has not organized legislative elections since 2011

In Chad, some 8 million voters are called to the polls on Sunday December 29 for legislative, provincial and municipal elections.

Nearly 179 political parties or groups are competing for the legislative elections with 718 lists.

1,329 candidates are authorized by the Constitutional Council to appear on the final lists of candidates for the legislative elections for 188 seats in parliament.

The legislative elections will mark the end of the transition with the restoration of the National Assembly. This was dissolved, like the other institutions in April 2021, when the army took power following the death of President Idriss Déby Itno on the battlefield.

For the national rapporteur of the MPS campaign and Minister of Infrastructure Aziz Mahamat Saleh, the next elections will “give a majority to the President of the Republic to translate his political program into reality”.

Beyond a “return to constitutional order”, “we will witness a generational renewal of the political class in the National Assembly and in local authorities”.

The last legislative elections date back to 2011. The National Assembly was to be renewed in 2015, but the vote was postponed several times due to the jihadist threat, then financial difficulties and the coronavirus epidemic.

The death of President Idriss Deby, followed by the transition led by his son, provided additional reasons to postpone the vote. A 93-member transitional parliament was appointed by presidential decree in 2021.

For political scientist Evariste Ngarlem Toldé, with the establishment of a new National Assembly, Chad will have new deputies, new elected officials. “Today, it is up to the people to decide to elect these representatives to the National Assembly, the deputies elected by universal suffrage. » The elected officials will thus have all their legitimacy.

The opposition denounces a regime that it considers autocratic and violently repressive.

“Participating in the legislative elections under current conditions means participating in legislative apartheid,” believes the boss of the Transformers party, Succès Masra, who was defeated in the May presidential election with a score of 18.54%.

“This election is to legitimize the power in place which resembles a succession dynasty and faces enormous challenges both inside and outside the country,” adds Professor Ahmat Mahamat Hassan, constitutionalist teaching at the University of N’Djamena.

For Remadji Hoinaty, researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), the elections are politically without stakes because they take place “among themselves, in other words between those who agreed to accompany Deby in the presidential election”.

“The seats will be shared and we will end up with a one-color assembly dominated by the MPS, the ruling party, a sort of registration chamber,” he notes.

Political scientist Evariste Ngarlem Toldé adds by explaining that “National Assemblies in Africa always respond to the requirements of those who govern”. Whatever the result, the party in power will have the majority and the laws that are passed will go in the direction of the one in power and “the deputies will vote for laws as proposed by the executive. »

The professor and researcher at the University of N’Djamena believes that the opposition’s boycott will have a double consequence.

First it could “discredit these legislative elections because the “Transformers” party represents a significant force in the opposition; its absence could influence the participation rate.”

Evariste Ngarlem Toldé also believes that these elections were an opportunity for the Succès Masra party to “test its weight on the national stage”.

According to him, on a political level, “this party is a political force, that is indisputable”. “But they had to come and test their strength on the political ground so that we know what their weight is. Unfortunately, they chose the empty chair policy. »

For him, this absence from the Transformers party will lead to a loss of ground.

“The fact of not having deputies in the Assembly will inevitably be a hard blow to this political group which always had the ease of mobilization.”

Morose despite the efforts of those in power, the electoral campaign suffered from an information black hole linked to a long strike by the Association of Online Media in Chad (AMET) against publication restrictions.

Indeed, on December 4, the president of the High Authority for Media and Audiovisual (Hama) banned the production of audiovisual content by online media that did not request authorization to this effect. He threatened to remove them from the list of legitimate media outlets. In response, around forty Chadian online media, among the most widely read, observed a “no press day” for the opening of the electoral campaign, in a context of growing tensions between the government and the private media.

On Thursday, December 19, the Supreme Court suspended Hama’s decision to ban the broadcast and production of audiovisual content to online media.

According to the President of the Supreme Court Samir Adam Annour, this ban on broadcasting and publication “deprives citizens of their right to information and constitutes a serious attack on freedom of expression and communication” on the eve of important elections.

The electoral campaign for these legislative, provincial and municipal elections ends on December 27. The proclamation of the provisional results is scheduled for January 15, 2025 and the final results on February 3, 2025.