On 9 October, the president of Chad’s media regulator, the High Authority for Media and Broadcasting (La Haute Autorité des Médias et de l’Audiovisuel, HAMA), Abderamane Barka, announced a directive prohibiting private media from publishing online audio-visual content outside of narrowly defined circumstances. Barka said outlets that violated these regulations would be suspended or have their licenses revoked. He added that outlets had to employ professional journalists with official press ID cards. The measures were presented as being part of a ‘cleaning up of the media landscape’ ahead of the legislative elections scheduled for 29 December. On 4 October, HAMA suspended Le Visionnaire newspaper over an article it published on alleged government corruption and suspended two senior members of its staff because they did not have press identity cards. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an NGO, accused the Chadian authorities of ‘using press accreditation as an instrument of censorship.’ 

Sources: La Haute Autorité des Médias et de l’Audiovisuel, Jeune Afrique, Committee to Protect Journalists (1), Committee to Protect Journalists (2), Tchadinfos

In September, prominent officials from the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (Mouvement Patriotique du Salut, MPS), and the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders (Parti Socialiste Sans Frontières, PSF) were reportedly detained by Chad’s intelligence services, as part of a broader pattern of arrests. According to the PSF, Robert Gam, the party’s Secretary-General, was ‘kidnapped’ on 20 September, having been subjected to ‘harassment and intimidation’ by authorities since the killing of the party’s leader Yaya Dillo in February 2024. Days earlier, Gam had threatened protests over the ongoing detention of several of Dillo’s associates. Allah Ridy Koné, an executive of the MPS, was arrested by security forces on 28 September. The reasons for the arrests remained unclear at the end of September, but according to the World Organisation Against Torture, they coincided with a ‘resurgence of arbitrary arrests and secret detentions by the intelligence services in Chad’.       

Sources: Jeune Afrique, Radio France Internationale, International Crisis Group, International IDEA, World Organisation Against Torture

On 6 May, Chad held presidential elections that formally ended the three-year rule of the country’s transitional military government. Former interim president, Mahamat Déby, of the Patriotic Salvation Movement (Mouvement Patriotique du Salut, MPS) won the election in the first round, receiving 61.03 per cent of the vote, according to official results declared by Chad’s election agency, the Agence nationale de gestion des élections (ANGE) and confirmed by the Constitutional Council (le Conseil constitutionnel). Prime Minister Succès Masra, of Les Transformateurs came in second place with 18.54 per cent. The election was contested by ten candidates, only one of whom, Lydie Beassemda, is a woman. Voter turnout was reported to be 75.89 per cent of registered voters. The election results were unsuccessfully challenged in the Constitutional Council by Masra, who alleged irregularities, including ballot stuffing. Two thousand nine hundred civil society members trained by the European Union were denied accreditation to observe the election by the ANGE , but it was observed by international observers from the Economic Community of West African States and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, which declared it to have been free and fair.    

Sources: Jeune Afrique (1), Jeune Afrique (2), Voice of America, International IDEA, The Conversation, Tchad Infos

On 24 March, Chad’s Constitutional Council announced that 10 of the 20 candidates for the forthcoming presidential election in May had been barred due to ‘irregularities’ in their applications. Amongst the excluded candidates were two outspoken critics of the government, Nasour Ibrahim Neguy Koursami and Rakhis Ahmat Saleh, the former of which is reported to be the subject of a preliminary criminal investigation by the Constitutional Council for suspected forgery in relation to his application. According to ISS Africa, a research institute, the law applied by the Council to exclude Koursami and another candidate, Clément Bagaou, was obsolete. The candidates approved to compete in the election were regarded by analysts, diplomats and the political opposition as offering little serious challenge to incumbent, Interim President Mahamat Idriss Déby Into. The barring of opposition candidates follows the death in February 2024 of leading opposition figure, Yaya Dillo Djerou, during an army assault.   

Sources: Jeune Afrique (1), Jeune Afrique (2), Al Jazeera, Voice of America, ISS Africa