General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, the head of Chad’s junta for the past three years, will take the oath of office on Thursday following an election that was fiercely contested by the country’s opposition groups.
International NGOs criticized Deby’s official victory of 61 percent of the May 6 vote, which his chief competitor referred to as a “masquerade” and which was neither credible nor free.
After his father, iron-fisted president Idriss Deby Itno was shot dead by rebels in April 2021, after 30 years in office, a junta of 15 generals named Deby as interim president.
Three years of military rule in a nation vital to the fight against jihadism in Africa’s restive Sahel region came to an end with the swearing-in.
An international community led by France, whose armies had recently been driven out of their other former colonies, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, swiftly embraced Deby in 2021.
Additionally, the investiture ritual formalizes what the opposition has called the Deby dynasty.
After just four months in office, Prime Minister Succes Masra, who was one of Deby’s most ardent opponents prior to being appointed prime minister, submitted his resignation on Wednesday following his party’s election setback.
The results have been disputed by economist Masra, who received 18.5 percent of the vote.
After the first round of voting, he declared his victory, but the opposition—whose leading members were excluded from the election and who had been brutally suppressed throughout Chad—accused him of being a stooge of the junta.
Masra’s attempt to have the results annulled was denied by Chad’s Constitutional Council. He then declared that there was “no other national legal recourse” and urged supporters to “remain mobilized” but “peaceful.”
On February 28, during an army attack, Deby’s cousin Yaya Dillo Djerou—who had emerged as the front-runner against the general—was shot and killed at close range, according to his party.
The attendance of world leaders at the investiture ought to give a sense of how well-liked the 40-year-old president is across the pond.
French President Emmanuel Macron is sending Franck Riester, his minister for foreign trade and Francophonie, to N’Djamena. In 2021, Macron traveled there to honor the late Marshal Deby before his son and successor.
With 1,000 soldiers, Chad is France’s sole remaining military outpost in the Sahel, and Macron was one of the few world leaders to congratulate Deby on his election. Chad is among the world’s poorest countries.
Reeling from Islamist insurgencies, some Sahelian countries have severed their connections with Paris and reestablished them with Russia.
One of the first people to congratulate Deby was Russian President Vladimir Putin, and observers will be watching closely to see how big of a delegation Moscow sends to N’Djamena for the ceremony.
