Chad election: Disillusionment high among voters

For Lydie Beassemda, May 6 will be an important date: When Chadians head to the polls to elect a new president, the 57-year-old will also stand for election.

She's one of 10 candidates, but the only woman to vie for the most important public role in the central African country.

She told DW in a recent interview that it was her father who founded the Party for Complete Democracy and Independence, making her career in politics a family affair.

"I wanted to lend a hand and offer a break to those who were there and who had grown slightly weary of the fight," said Beassemda.

Since 2018, she Beassemda been at the helm of the party.

But the cards might not be stacked in her favor on Monday. After three decades of authoritarian rule under President Idriss Deby Itno, the country saw a seamless transition of power to his son Mahamat Idriss Deby in 2021.

Deby has been ruling Chad as the head of a military junta since his father's death, and is considered most likely to win the election.

An election amid chaos

The vote is taking place under difficult circumstances. Several security issues throughout the region have also directly affected Chad, from Islamist insurgencies in the West African Sahel countries to the ongoing war in neighboring Sudan.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Sudan have settled in Chad's eastern provinces.

Amid this turmoil, European countries are also paying close attention to the events in and around the region. With European and US armed forces having been driven out of most Sahel countries and thus losing their influence in the region, the West is largely clinging to Chad as its only remaining partner.

Meanwhile, armed groups are rife in the country's northern regions, where government control is considerably low. Residents of the north have been complaining about being forgotten by politicians; none of the 10 candidates have come to the north during their respective campaigns.

"It's an election that concerns all Chadians, so the campaign should cover the whole country," said tradesman Younouss Ali in the northern town of Miski, in Tibesti province.

"The president who is going to be elected will be the president of all Chadians. Unfortunately, here we are neglected, nobody is coming to explain to us why to vote or to ask us what we want or what's on our minds."

Chad's opposition has been weakened

In the capital, N'Djamena, the political tug-of-war in the run-up to the vote has witnessed some surprising twists and turns in recent months.

A standoff between Deby and his fiercest rivals in late February had the country on the brink and led to his opponent and would-be challenger Yaya Dillo being killed by security forces. Observers have described Dillo's death as a political execution.

Meanwhile, some of the other political figures in the running saw their applications for candidature turned down by the electoral council.

Deby's most prominent challenger is Prime Minister Succes Masra.

The founder of the opposition party Les Transformateurs spearheaded a series of protests against Deby's military junta in October 2022, which were violently suppressed by security forces. Hundreds were killed, according to a count by protesters.

Masra fled the country but came back to serve as interim prime minister after a deal was struck under the auspices of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi. However, the move lost Masra a great deal of of credibility among opponents to the Deby dynasty.

Chadians 'have never chosen their leaders'

Many remain doubtful as to the motivation behind Masra's candidature. Various opposition figures and analysts consider his nomination nothing but a mere strategy to legitimize the expected election of the interim president.

Masra himself has rejected such criticism, saying he was running to "pilot, not co-pilot" his country.

Saleh Kebzabo, a one-time opponent who preceded Masra as prime minister, has warned of looming chaos. 

"Let's not forget that Prime Minister Masra is the author of [the protests of] October 20 that cost Chad more than 300 lives, according to his own numbers. Those aren't my numbers," Kebzabo told DW. "And today, he is back, I think, to sow the same grain of division."

Speaking with DW, Masra presented himself as the candidate for a people looking for "justice, equality, and change."

"One of the great tragedies of the Chadian people is that they are prisoners in a system where they have never chosen their leaders," he said.

Concerns about transparency

But how free and fair can the elections be? In recent weeks, observers have noted the involvement of military personnel in the campaign of Deby, himself an army general. Soldiers were even spotted installing Deby's giant campaign posters.

For human rights activist Jean-Bosco Manga, this is problematic in several ways. "The interference of the army with politics can compromise the democratic process and weaken the institutions," said Manga. "When the army engages in politics, this can make the public lose faith."

Most recently, an argument about procedures regarding the publication of results also caused a public outcry. Delegates of the electorate and the polling stations assisting the verification of results will, according to the new electoral law, be barred from taking photos of the final signed documents, the electoral commission announced.

The commission claimed this move was meant to prevent fraud.

Agnes Ildjima Lokiam, who leads a civil society network of electoral observation delegates, refuted this position. "We speak of an election being free and transparent," Lokiam told DW.

"It is when people film the [signing of the] minutes that transparency is achieved," she said, adding that the ban on filming the results amounted to a step backwards for democracy.

Beassemda not giving up

Notwithstanding her ambitions, presidential aspirant Lydie Beassemda knows the realities on the ground are working against her campaign.

"The level of political culture is still weak in Chad," she told DW. "As a woman, it's even worse, because men don't accept that you occupy the same political space."

Still, Beassemda upholds her political vision of creating a federal Chadian state despite the odds being stacked against her:

"It would still be illogical for us not to compete in this election," she said. "If we're not competing, it means we already have given up, that we have abandoned our fight."

Blaise Dariustone from N'Djamena and Georges Ibrahim Tounkara contributed to this article.

Edited by: Sertan Sanderson