Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

holds

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operate ...

on national level for a

head of state A head of state (or chief of state) is the public persona who officially embodies a state Foakes, pp. 110–11 " he head of statebeing an embodiment of the State itself or representatitve of its international persona." in its unity and l ...

– the

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

– and a

legislature A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its p ...

. The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. The

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

(''Assemblée Nationale'') has 155 members, elected for a four-year term in 25 single-member

constituencies An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...

and 34 multi-member

. Chad is a

one party dominant state A dominant-party system, or one-party dominant system, is a political occurrence in which a single political party continuously dominates election results over running opposition groups or parties. Any ruling party staying in power for more th ...

with the

Patriotic Salvation Movement The Patriotic Salvation Movement ( ar, الحركة الوطنية للإنقاذ, french: Mouvement patriotique du salut, MPS) is the ruling political party in Chad. History After Idriss Déby, an army commander who participated in an unsu ...

in power, although according to the

African Union The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the Africa ...

, elections in Chad are generally free and fair.

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

, however, has criticized the election process in Chad, arguing that they have problems such as

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

, multiple voting, underage voting, and low voter turnout.

History of elections

Former president,

Idriss Déby Idriss Déby Itno ' (18 June 1952 – 20 April 2021) was a Chadian politician and military officer who was the president of Chad from 1990 until his death in 2021. Déby was a member of the Bidayat clan of the Zaghawa ethnic group. A high-ranki ...

, seized power in 1990 through a rebellion. The second election of Déby was reported by international observers to be fraudulent. In 1997, parliamentary elections were held, with the MPS party of Déby winning 63 of the 125 seats existing at the time. International observers also claimed that these elections witnessed serious irregularities. In May 2001, Déby won the presidential election in the first round with 63% of the vote, but the election was considered to be fraudulent, and several opposition leaders were arrested after accusing the Chadian government of election fraud. Because of prominent electoral irregularities in the previous elections in 2001 and 2006, the 2011 presidential election was boycotted by the major opposition

parties A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature fo ...

, which resulted in Déby winning 89% of the vote in the first round. Most recently, Déby was elected to his fifth term in 2016, after abolishing presidential

term limits A term limit is a legal restriction that limits the number of terms an officeholder may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potenti ...

in 2004 by amending the

Constitution of Chad The Constitution of the Republic of Chad (french: Constitution de la République du Tchad) is the supreme law of Chad.Current Constitution of Chad Chad's eighth constitution since independence from France, it was adopted on 4 May 2018. The text es ...

. Most recently, Kodi Mahamat Bam, President of the Independent National Electoral Commission announced the postponement of legislative elections to April 2021. The stated reason was related to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

History of elections

Latest elections

Presidential elections

Parliamentary elections

References

External links