Chad’s ruling party on Sunday won two-thirds of the seats in the legislative election, provisional results show.
The legislative election was boycotted by many in the opposition last month, and the win by the ruling party reinforced President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s hold on power.
Results of the Dec. 29 election seal the oil-producing Central African nation’s transition to constitutional rule more than three years after Deby seized control following the sudden death of his father and long-standing predecessor Idriss Deby Itno.
Deby’s party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, secured 124 of the 188 seats at the National Assembly, the national electoral body said. The participation rate was put at 51.56%.
The vote, which also included municipal and regional elections, was Chad’s first in more than a decade.
But opposition leader Succes Masra’s Transformateurs party and several others boycotted the election, saying the vote was skewed and lacked transparency. The government has denied this.
Deby was elected president in another disputed vote in May, three years after declaring himself an interim leader when rebels killed his father on the battlefield.
Since Deby’s election, Chad – a key Western ally in the fight against Islamic militants in the Sahel region ended its defence cooperation pact with France and threatened to withdraw from a regional multinational security force.
