Opposition parties are calling on Chadians to boycott the vote, calling it a sham aimed at consolidating the ruling party’s power.
General elections in Chad have begun with voting for the president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno were presented as an important step in the transition to democracy, but are being boycotted by the country’s opposition parties.
Members of the armed forces and nomadic tribes in Chad were called to vote on Saturday for logistical reasons.
But most people in the African country of about 20 million people will vote on Sunday to elect a national parliament, regional assemblies and local councils. Polling stations are open from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time (05:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. GMT).
Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi, reporting from the capital N’Djamena on Saturday afternoon, said many Chadians described feeling “indifferent” in the run-up to the vote.
“They say they don’t expect any changes. They say they believe the ruling party will win no matter what,” she said.
“A lot of them just talk about…bread and butter issues: They say the cost of living is extremely high. They talk about widespread corruption and cronyism.”
The country’s opposition parties called for a boycott of the vote, which they described as a sham election.
“No election campaign, no vote on December 29th. Stay at home and ask others to do the same,” the main opposition Transformers party said in a post on Facebook.
Nevertheless, initial estimates suggest that around 45 percent of the country’s 200,000 nomadic tribesmen and 45,000 soldiers had cast their votes by midday on Saturday.
As the AFP news agency reported, military personnel arrived early at a polling station in the Koundoul barracks near N’Djamena.
“The vote is proceeding normally. “The military votes freely,” said Ousmane Houzibe, a senior election official.
“Significant concern”
The elections come amid recurring attacks by the Boko Haram rebel group in the Lake Chad region.
Chad recently too ended a military agreement with its former colonial power France, and the country is accused of interfering in the conflict in neighboring Sudan.
President Deby’s government has portrayed the weekend’s elections as a key phase in the transition to democratic rule.
The 40-year-old leader took power in 2021 after his father’s death. Idriss Deby Itnowho had ruled the country with an iron fist for three decades.
Analyst Mamadou Bodian said that while the elections marked a “significant milestone” and concluded a three-year transition period, they were still closely contested and were seen as favoring the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) party.
“Even the election management body is dominated by people loyal to the ruling party,” Bodian told Al Jazeera. “And this raises serious concerns not only about the process but also about the independence of the entire electoral system.”
A lack of international observers and an “opaque” vote-counting process are also exacerbating long-standing distrust of Chad’s elections, Bodian said.
The opposition’s boycott “reflects the widespread belief that these elections are neither free nor fair,” he added. “And that also raises doubts about Chad’s democratic prospects.”
Deby won one five-year presidential mandate in May after a vote that the opposition denounced as fraudulent. The last parliamentary elections took place in 2011.
