Chad PM Submits Resignation To Newly Elected Junta Chief

Two weeks after his defeat to junta chief Mahamat Deby in the presidential elections, Chadian Prime Minister Succes Masra has stepped down.

He stated this on his Facebook page on Wednesday.

According to final results, Deby, 40, won the May 6 presidential vote with 61 percent of the vote and will take the oath of office at an investiture ceremony on Thursday in the capital, N’Djamena.

After rebels shot his father, iron-fisted president Idriss Deby Itno, dead after 30 years in power, a junta of 15 generals proclaimed him transitional president in April 2021.

Masra, who is also 40 and was once a fierce Deby opponent before becoming prime minister four months ago, won 18.5 percent of the vote but contested the results.

“I’ve just submitted my resignation and that of the transition government, which became irrelevant with the end of the presidential election,” he wrote on his official Facebook handle.

The move, he added, was also in accordance with the constitution.

Masra claimed victory in the first round of the ballot, which his party called a “masquerade” and which international rights groups had said would be neither credible nor fair.

The economist and former opposition leader faced accusations of being a stooge by the opposition, which has been violently repressed in Chad and its leading figures barred from standing.

After the Constitutional Council rejected a bid by the prime minister to annul the result, Masra said there was “no other national legal recourse” and called on supporters to “remain mobilised” but “peaceful.”

Deby called the election to end three years of military rule in a country crucial in the fight against jihadism across Africa’s restive Sahel region.

In 2021, he was quickly endorsed by an international community led by France, whose forces in recent years have been ousted by military regimes in other former colonies – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

Chad is France’s last military foothold in the Sahel region, with 1,000 soldiers, and French President Emmanuel Macron has congratulated Deby on his election.