Ruling party wins majority seats in parliamentary elections

Chad’s governing party has taken the majority of seats in last month’s parliamentary election that was mostly boycotted by opposition parties, according to provisional results. Al Jazeera reports that President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, has secured 124 of the 188 seats at the National Assembly, Ahmed Bartchiret, head of the electoral commission, announced on Saturday. The participation rate was put at 51.56%, which opposition parties said showed voter doubts about the validity of the contest. The 29 December election was presented by Deby’s party as the last stage of the country’s transition to democracy after he took power as a military ruler in 2021. The takeover followed the death of Deby’s father and longtime President Idriss Deby Itno, who spent three decades in power. Mahamat Deby eventually won last year’s disputed Presidential vote. The vote, which also included municipal and regional elections, was Chad’s first in more than a decade. The election was boycotted by more than 10 opposition parties, including the main Transformers party, whose candidate, Succes Masra, came second in the presidential election. The main opposition had called the election a ‘charade’ and expressed worries that it would be a repeat of the Presidential vote, which election observers said was not credible. Last month’s vote came at a critical period for Chad, which is battling several security challenges – from attacks in the Lake Chad region by the Boko Haram armed group to ending decades-long military cooperation with France, its former colonial power.

Full Al Jazeera report

At least 19 people have been killed in Chad where security forces said they had prevented an attempt by armed fighters to storm the Presidential complex in the capital N’Djamena, reports Al Jazeera. At least 18 of a force of 24 armed men were killed in the failed assault on the President’s office on Wednesday evening, the government said, and one member of the security forces also died in the gun battles. Hours after the shooting, Chad’s Foreign Minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah appeared in a video, surrounded by soldiers and with a gun on his belt, saying, ‘The situation is completely under control … the destabilisation attempt was put down.’ The attack coincided with an official visit by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Chad. Hours before the shooting erupted, Wang Yi had met with Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and other senior officials. Deby was in the Presidential complex at the time of the attack, according to Koulamallah. Deby seized power after rebels killed his father, longstanding President Idriss Deby, in 2021. The older Deby had ruled Chad since a coup in the early 1990s.

A security source told the French news agency AFP that the attackers were members of the Boko Haram armed group, but Koulamallah later said they were ‘probably not’ rebels. A security source also told the Reuters news agency that the incident was likely an ‘attempted terrorist attack’. The attack comes less than two weeks after Chad held a contested general election that the government hailed as a key step towards ending military rule, but that was marked by low turnout and opposition allegations of fraud. According to Al Jazeera, the former French colony, which is rich in oil resources but one of the poorest countries in Africa, hosted France’s last military bases in the region known as the Sahel, but at the end of November, ended defence and security agreements with Paris, calling them ‘obsolete’. About 1 000 French military personnel were stationed in the country and are in the process of being withdrawn.

Full Al Jazeera report