Chad junta chief Deby wins presidential vote

Chad’s junta chief Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno won this week’s presidential election in the first round, according to provisional official results released on Thursday, extending his family’s decades-long grip on power.

Monday’s vote aimed to end three years of military rule in a country crucial to the fight against jihadism across Africa’s Sahel desert region.

The ANGE electoral commission said Deby won 61.03 per cent of votes, beating his Prime Minister Succes Masra who only garnered 18.53 per cent, in results due to be confirmed by the Constitutional Council.

Soldiers fired shots in the air in the capital N’Djamena out of joy and to deter protesters, AFP journalists reported, after Masra had earlier claimed victory and warned Deby’s team would rig the results.

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Some frightened people ran for cover or to return home after the shots, while near the presidential palace in central N’Djamena Deby’s supporters shouted, sung and sounded car horns in celebration, AFP reporters saw.

Supporters of Masra, a 40-year-old economist, had been holding their own ballot count in parallel to the official one, and in a speech posted on his Facebook page hours before the results were released, Masra said his team’s count “establishes the victory in the first round, that of change over the status quo”.

“The victory is resounding and without blemish,” he said.

Masra went on to say the team of Deby, who was proclaimed transitional president three years ago by the army, would soon announce that he had won and “steal the victory from the people”.

Masra, a former opposition leader appointed prime minister in January, urged Chadians to “mobilise peacefully to prove our victory”.

In Thursday’s announcement was a surprise, coming nearly two weeks earlier than the scheduled release date of May 21.

Deby and Masra faced eight other candidates who were either relatively unknown or considered not hostile to the regime.

Former premier Albert Pahimi Padacke came third with 16.91 per cent of votes in an election that saw turnout of 75.89 per cent, ANGE chief Ahmed Bartchiret announced.