Yaounde — Chad's presidential election concludes Monday with civilians going to the polls, a day after members of the military cast their ballots. Transitional President General Mahamat Idriss Deby is facing nine challengers, including his current prime minister. The election, designed to end three years of a military government, has been peaceful so far. However, there is tension over a ban on taking pictures of election result sheets at polling stations.
Hundreds of people started arriving at polling stations in Chad's capital N'djamena as early as 5:30 am local time.
Among the voters at the University of N'djamena was 29-year-old student Abdel Koura. He says he came out early to vote because he wants a president that will bring peace and provide jobs for youths who are unemployed after completing their education.
Koura says voting is his civic right. He says he is calling on all civilians, especially youths, to come out in huge numbers and vote for their leader in peace. He says he is also pleading with Chad's transitional government to avoid chaos by ensuring that the elections are transparent and free and the winner would be who civilians have voted for.
Early voting was peaceful. However, Chad's National Election Management Agency, known as ANGE, said that several thousand polling stations opened late due to what they call logistical difficulties.
Chad's transitional president General Mahamat Idriss Deby voted in N'djamena's second district and pleaded with civilians to go out en masse and perform their civic duty of voting for the person who will manage Chad's affairs for the next five years.
ANGE says 8.2 million people are registered to vote. It says Chad's military has been deployed to protect voters' safety in over 26,500 polling stations.
Chad says over 2,500 national and international observers from 120 groups are accredited to monitor the elections. It says applications from another 60 groups were rejected for not respecting the country's laws.
Cyrille Nguiegang Ntchassep is the spokesperson for observers from the six-nation Central African Economic and Monetary Commission. He has concerns that peace will not hold.
He says perceivable tensions over a ban on filming or taking photos of result sheets in polling stations and publishing them on social media and radio and television are likely to degenerate into violent clashes because civilians think that the central African state's elections management body is controlled by Deby who created it. Ntchassep says he does not understand why Chad is reluctant to proclaim election results in a day or two as was the case in Senegal's March 24 presidential polls.
Opposition and civil society groups, including the Transformers Party of Deby's main challenger Succces Masra, said they planned to photograph the election result sheets and distribute them to the international community. They say the move is to prevent ANGE from rigging the elections in favor of Deby.
Tahir Oloy Hassan is ANGE's spokesperson. Hassan says ANGE is a permanent, independent and impartial body that does not receive orders from any state authority including Deby.
He says the ban on filming and taking photos of result sheets and prohibition of media organs from having access to some polling stations and sensitive areas is to reduce tensions that may arise from misinformation and manipulation by people who want to see Chad in chaos.
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He said claims by opposition candidates that Chad's military was instructed to vote for Deby when they went to the polls on Sunday are unfounded.
ANGE says it has up to May 21 to publish provisional results and only Chad's Constitutional Council has the powers to proclaim definitive results.
The elections are design to end three years of transition that followed the death of Idriss Deby Itno in 2021.
Chad's opposition and civil society says the younger Deby's rule was marked by political tensions including October 2022 pro-democracy protests during which the central African state's security forces killed at least 50 people, injured 300 and arrested several hundred others.
