Chad's Idriss Deby wins 6th presidential term

By Rodrigue Forku

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AA) - Chad's President Idriss Deby Itno has won the sixth consecutive term with 79.3% of the vote, the electoral commission announced late Monday.

The country's Supreme Court will confirm or invalidate the results of the April 11 poll in the coming days. Voter turnout was 64.8%, according to the electoral commission.

The opposition has contested the results. “These results do not reflect the reality on the ground,” said Brice Mbaïmon Guedmbaye, the candidate of the Movement of Chadian Patriots for the Republic (MPTR).

Itno and his party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), has dominated Chadian politics since ascending to power in December 1990.

A new constitution, promulgated in 2018, allowed Itno to run for two additional six-year terms back-to-back after the end of his tenure that year.

Since February, a coalition of non-governmental groups, labor unions, and opposition political parties have held peaceful demonstrations in the capital N’Djamena and other major cities across the country despite a government ban on public gatherings.

Election results came a day after the Chadian army announced that it has killed more than 300 rebels in the northern part of the Central African country.

On Saturday, the US Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency US government employees from its Embassy in N’Djamena fearing political unrest and violence.

A landlocked Sahelian country in Central Africa, Chad has been struggling with security challenges associated with conflicts in bordering countries, as well as the impacts of climate change, for the past decade.