“Make me the main pilot of the country and we will land at the airport of democracy! » As if nothing had changed and he was still this opponent of the “Déby system” which has ruled Chad for thirty-five years, Succès Masra shouts, Sunday March 10, from the platform of the “balcony of the hope”, headquarters of his party, Les Transformateurs, in N’Djamena. Except that the 40-year-old politician today wears the double hat of prime minister of the head of state, Mahamat Idriss Déby, and presidential candidate against the latter.
A sign of its change in status: the army now supervises its meetings instead of dispersing them with tear gas. “Who better than us, the people, to serve the people? », harangues the tribune in a speech punctuated with biblical references. In the public, no one seems to doubt that he is the transitional president’s most serious rival in the election set for May 6.
Hoisted by a group of officers onto the chair of his late father, Idriss Déby Itno (killed in April 2021 while a rebel group threatened to take N’Djamena), the young general had promised to return power to civilians at the end of the transition. But three years later, “Kaka”, as he is nicknamed in Chad, changed his mind. He is preparing his election, accompanied by the same international goodwill as that which prevailed during his accession to power in defiance of the rules of the Constitution.
“God will give us power,” wants to believe Josianne Mbaïdara, a Transformers activist dressed all in blue, the party’s color. However, there is general agreement that it would take a miracle for power to change hands. The president-candidate’s party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), which has never lost a vote since Idriss Déby Itno took power by force in 1990, controls the electoral institutions. “Let’s not mix the political beliefs of the men who run these institutions with their positions, which demand neutrality. Ultimately, it is by the results of the ballot boxes that we will judge who is popular or not,” replies Issa Doubragne, spokesperson for the MPS.
“Toupee application”
“Under these conditions, what guarantees of transparency does Masra have to believe that he has a chance? », pretends to wonder Soumaïne Adoum, the spokesperson for the civil society platform Wakit Tama. For those who, like him, have fought alongside Succès Masra since 2018 and the birth of his party, there is only one possible answer: the former opponent has rallied to power. “It’s a false candidacy, a guarantee which only serves to give the illusion of an open ballot! », Supports opponent Max Kemkoye, convinced that in exchange for his candidacy, Succès Masra obtained the assurance of retaining the prime ministership until the next legislative elections, the date of which has not yet been announced.
“He acts pragmatically,” puts sociologist Ladiba Gondeu into perspective. Success Masra knows that in Chad, whoever organizes the elections wins them and then redistributes the crumbs. This is his only way to ensure his political survival. »
But at what cost ? On November 3, 2023, after a year of exile, Succès Masra returned to Chad without fear of legal proceedings after an agreement providing for amnesty for those responsible for the massacres of October 20, 2022. The army then violently repressed the demonstrators came out in particular at the call of the opponent to demand the departure of the military in power. The toll is still uncertain, oscillating between 73 and 300 deaths, but for many opposition supporters, the conditions for the return of Succès Masra carry the certainty of betrayal.
Since he was named Prime Minister on January 1, the Transformers leader has taken on the bad role and taken the hits. The announcement of a more than 40% increase in the price of gasoline in mid-February triggered an indefinite strike by civil servants. A month later, Mahamat Idriss Déby took the opposite view and decreed free water and electricity until the end of the year.
Two months before the election, it is difficult not to see this as an electoral measure for the president-candidate, even if the popular neighborhoods of N’Djamena have been in the dark for two weeks and the city center only receives power at night. at the start of Ramadan where temperatures are around 45°C during the day. In its defense, the government cites the excessive demand for clean energy during the hot season.
“Chadian exception”
These promises do not matter, Soumaine Adoum seems to retort, for whom “Mahamat Déby does not need popular support as long as he is supported by the West”. Wakit Tama’s spokesperson also said he was “shocked” by the comments made on March 7 by Emmanuel Macron’s personal envoy for Africa following a meeting with the transitional president. During a four-day stopover in Chad, Jean-Marie Bockel declared to the presidential press his “admiration” for the Chadian transition.
Pronounced eight days after the death of opponent Yaya Dillo, killed during the assault led by the army against the headquarters of his party, these words resonate as an endorsement of power and its methods. Especially since Mahamat Idriss Déby had just announced, on March 2, his candidacy for the presidential election without a word for his cousin and deceased rival.
“When we demand firmer positions in favor of democracy, Westerners respond that this would risk pushing the authorities into the pro-Russian camp,” regrets Soumaïne Adoum. “International opinion is only observing the good success of the Chadian transition, the president’s record speaks for him,” welcomes Issa Doubragne, the spokesperson for the MPS.
“It is the Chadian exception,” analyzes the sociologist Ladiba Gondeu, for whom “the Westerners, in the regional context, cannot afford to lose the support of Chad and choose stability at all costs, even if it means relegating the human rights and democratic alternation in the background”.
“The French vision of Chad remains frozen in a Foccardian realism inherited from colonization, according to which only a soldier can ensure the stability of the country,” underlines Sali Bakari, professor of history at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of N’Djamena. From this perspective, Chad is seen as a strategic lock in a region shaken by crises and where Russia is gaining influence. The Kremlin is also making eyes at Mahamat Idriss Déby, who met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on January 24.
Rejection of France
Above all, Chad remains France’s final military bastion in the Sahel. It retains three holdings and approximately 1,500 men. Coming at a time when the Elysée is promising a reduction in the French military presence in Africa, Jean-Marie Bockel affirmed that in Chad, on the contrary, “we must stay and of course we will stay”.
For the Wakit Tama collective, which has been campaigning for years for the departure of French troops stationed in the country, it is a “declaration of war on the people”: “The presence of French soldiers serves the interests of Paris, not those of the Chadians “, thunders Soumaine Adoum, while the Chadian army, according to him, “is amply capable of defending its territory without help from France.”
At a time when more and more Chadians seem to be losing interest in a presidential election that they believe is a foregone conclusion, the rejection of the West, and of France in particular, has become a theme of mobilization. “Paris continues to support the leaders against the people, as if France had learned nothing from the recent coups in the Sahel,” sighs opponent Max Kemkoye. She would seek to push the Chadians into the arms of Russia that she could not do better. »
