Chad’s President Idriss Deby won a sixth mandate in polls marred by an opposition boycott and rebels advancing on the capital.
Deby, 68, secured 79% of the vote in the April 11 poll, Kodi Mahamat Bam, president of the Independent National Election Commission, said in the capital, N’Djamena Monday. Albert Pahimi Padacke, who served on many of Deby’s cabinets, got 10% of the vote. Voter turnout was 64%.
The president was meant to face nine opposition candidates in the 11 April poll after the Supreme Court barred seven others. Three of his eligible challengers quit the race. That includes main opposition leader, Saleh Kebzabo, who withdrew from the polls after a deadly shootout at another candidate’s home in late February.
The election win will tighten Deby’s grip on a country that’s been a key contributor of troops in a multinational effort to defeat Islamist militants in West Africa’s Sahel region. Inside its borders, Chad faces the threat of Libya-based rebels occasionally threatening N’Djamena.
Chad is also confronting major social and economic challenges. Two-thirds of the population of N’Djamena aren’t connected to the power grid, and the country is the third-poorest in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. A succession of crude-price crashes have also led to problems servicing debt in the oil-producing nation.
