Nervous residents flee capital as election day looms

As election officials report that everything is in place for Wednesday's presidential poll, fears of more rebel attacks are sending residents of the Chad capital N’djamena over the river into neighbouring Cameroon. “We are going to put ourselves into a safe haven for now. The war could restart at any moment,” said a French citizen and N’djamena resident waiting in the line at the Ngueli Bridge that links N’djamena’s suburbs to Cameroon. Residents fear a rerun of a rebel dawn attack on the capital last month that left 300 dead and injured. Those with enough money to pay for transport and lodging in Cameroon, or with family connections over the border, have been flooding into northern Cameroon since the weekend, Chadian customs officials told IRIN. Chadians left behind in the world’s fifth poorest country, according to the UN, are fearful about what election day will bring. “Only God knows what will happen tomorrow. Those of us who have nowhere else to go are crossing our fingers and waiting,” said Paul Nguirayo, who has no job and no money. The incumbent President Idriss Deby has ignored pleas from Chad’s civil opposition, the influential regional organisation the African Union, US government, and the Catholic Church to postpone Wednesday’s election until stability can be guaranteed. “All the preparations are in place for the election to proceed without problems. We have distributed all the materials, including in those areas that were held by rebels. The government has told us that security will be assured,” said Ahmat Mahamat Bahir, president of the government's National Electoral Commission on Tuesday. According to the electoral commission 11,800 polling stations have been set up throughout Chad’s vast territory about three times the size of France to accommodate 5.8 million registered voters. In the last national election in June 2005 just 30 percent of Chadians turned out to vote. Chad’s civil opposition has boycotted the election to protest Deby’s changing of the constitutional term limit, saying he is trying to install himself for life. Opposition parties have kept out of the spotlight during the last week of campaigning, although their protest slogan “dialogue first, elections after” has been promoted on t-shirts and stickers seen around the capital. “The government regrets that these parties have taken this partisan position and invites it to not interfere now in the political debate,” said government spokesman Hourmadki Moussa Doumgor. Running against Deby are two serving government officials aligned with pro-Deby parties, Pahimi Padacke Albert, the agriculture minister and Mahamat Abdoulaye, the minister for decentralisation. Kassire Coumakoye, a former prime minister under Deby between 1993 and 1995, has also thrown his hat into the ring. The only opposition candidate fielded, Brahim Koulamallah, is from the little-known African Socialist Movement. The election will take place against the backdrop of growing instability in Chad’s eastern provinces as militia groups fill a power vacuum, displacing Chadians from their villages and threatening the more than quarter of a million Sudanese and Central Africa Republic refugees sheltering there.