(): Voters in Chad headed to the polls on Monday to cast their ballot in a long delayed presidential election that is set to end three years of military rule under interim president, Mahamat Deby Itno. Deby Itno seized power after his father who ran the country for more than three decades was killed fighting rebels in 2021. Last year, the government announced it was extending the 18-month transition for two more years, which provoked protests across the country.

There are 10 candidates on the ballot, including a woman. Analysts say Deby Itno is expected to emerge among the front runners. The main opposition figure Yaya Dillo, the current president’s cousin, was killed in February in circumstances that remain unclear. “For years now, we’ve had to cope with the high cost of living, without any solution,” said Adoumadji Jean, a teacher at a state secondary school in Moyen-Chari province, in an interview with The Associated Press.

 “We want a change this year through this election”, he added.

                Along with high food prices partly caused by the war in Ukraine, Chad has absorbed a wave of over half a million refugees from neighbouring Sudan, and is dealing with a threat from the Boko Haram insurgency spilling over from its southwestern border with Nigeria.

                Boko Haram launched an insurgency more than a decade ago against Western education and seeks to establish Islamic law in Nigeria’s northeast. The insurgency has spread to West African neighbours including Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

                In March, an attack the government blamed on Boko Haram killed 7 soldiers, reviving fears of violence in the Lake Chad area after a period of peace following a successful operation launched in 2020 by the Chadian army to destroy the extremist group’s bases there. Schools, mosques and churches reopened and humanitarian organisations returned.

                Human rights groups have called for an investigation in to the killing of Chad’s main opposition figure, Dillo. The government has said Dillo was killed during an attack on the the National State Security Agency by his group, known as The Socialist Party Without Borders. But a photo of Dillo showed he was killed by a single bullet wound to the head.

                Human Rights Watch said the killing raised serious concerns about the environment for the election.

                “With his most significant opponents either co-opted or eliminated, and critical electoral institutions stacked with his supporters, Deby Itno’s victory is all but certain,” wrote Michelle Gavin for the Council of Foreign Relations, a Washington DC based think tank.

                The oil-exporting country of nearly 18 million people has not had a free-and-fair transfer of power since it became independent in 1960 after 40 years of the French colonial rule. (AP)

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