(29 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
++AUDIO AS INCOMING++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
N’Djamena, Chad – 29 December 2024
1. Chadian President and former junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, giving his ID card to polling station staff
2. Deby holding ballot paper
3. Deby casting his ballot
4. SOUNDBITE (French) Marshal Mahamat Idriss Deby, President of Chad: ++AUDIO AS INCOMING++
“December 29, 2024 is a historic day for our country. These elections will pave the way for the era of decentralisation so long awaited and desired by the Chadian people. It will be effective. I call on all my compatriots on the electoral lists to get out and vote in massive numbers.”
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
Chadian President and former junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, cast his vote on Sunday in legislative and regional elections that will end a three-year transitional period from military rule but which the main opposition is boycotting after accusing authorities of not overseeing a credible electoral process.
After voting at a polling station in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, Deby called on all those on electoral lists to "get out and vote in massive numbers."
The parliamentary election is the first in more than a decade in Chad and comes months after the junta leader won a disputed presidential vote that was meant to return democracy.
Deby took power in 2021 following the death of his father and long-time president Idriss Deby Itno, who spent three decades in power.
The oil-exporting country of 18 million people, among Africa’s poorest, had not had a free and fair transfer of power since it became independent from France in 1960.
The elections this year are the first in junta-led countries in Africa’s Sahel region to hold a promised but delayed return to democracy.
At least 8 million voters are registered to elect 188 legislators in the Central African nation’s new National Assembly.
Representatives at the provincial and municipal levels will also be elected.
More than ten opposition parties are boycotting the vote, including the main Transformers party, whose candidate, Succes Masra, came second in the presidential election.
The party has criticised the parliamentary election, as well as the presidential vote that many observers were banned from, as a “charade” and a ploy for Deby to remain in power to continue a “dynasty."
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