Friday, May 05, 2006
Elections in Chad - The future is in your Hands?
May 3rd was the official date of the presidential elections in Chad, Central Africa. Still carrying the lingers of April 13th rebel attacks on the capital city and enduring the bitterness of the boycot of all major opposition parties in the country, Idriss Déby is likely to continue is 16 year reign over the cradle of humanity. Earlier this week, the UN was building refugee camps in neighbouring Cameroon to prepare for what it thought would be an inflow of refugees from N'Djemena as the rebels (or mercenaries, depending on one's view point) were thought to invade the city. So far, so good, though... My friends in N'Djamena went out for a beer after the April 13th rebel attacks, and many expats in Canada decided not to cast a ballot, for the results of the election is known in advance.
While the results of the elections are not expected until May 14th, it seems like the polling itself went quite smootly, which can of course be associated with the high presence of French troops in the country. Even after having seen half the military fly to Darfur to plot a coup against his government last December, Déby is convinced in his own and his kinsmen's capacities of setting the rules of the game in Chad. He has indeed recently settled a dispute with the World Bank about the way oil revenues are used; he seem to have won his case in arguing the big money should serve for paying weapons to defend the country against Sudan, with which the civil war clearly is not as ''over'' as the Tripoli Agreements would like us to believe. One thing is that for sure the descendents of the Sao, a tribe famous for the exceptional height of its members, will need all their courage to go through this.
While the results of the elections are not expected until May 14th, it seems like the polling itself went quite smootly, which can of course be associated with the high presence of French troops in the country. Even after having seen half the military fly to Darfur to plot a coup against his government last December, Déby is convinced in his own and his kinsmen's capacities of setting the rules of the game in Chad. He has indeed recently settled a dispute with the World Bank about the way oil revenues are used; he seem to have won his case in arguing the big money should serve for paying weapons to defend the country against Sudan, with which the civil war clearly is not as ''over'' as the Tripoli Agreements would like us to believe. One thing is that for sure the descendents of the Sao, a tribe famous for the exceptional height of its members, will need all their courage to go through this.
