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CHAD: 3RD MAY SET FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS February 25, 2006
Apunyu bonny
(SomaliNet) Chadian government has set 3rd May for presidential elections tallying with calls by opposition leaders to hold a pre-poll national forum on the electoral process and a host of other political and fiscal problems gripping the country. IRIN Reported Friday.
President Idriss Deby is among the contestants and some opposition personalities are already saying they will have nothing to do with the polls following the controversial amendment to the constitution passed last year.
"We will not participate in these elections. It's clear this is all rigged," opposition leader Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh told IRIN on Friday.
Mean while members of the opposition have been asking the government to postpone the poll, saying there are broad concerns about the make-up of the electoral commission and the overall process. For months they have been calling for a national forum to address these concerns and many others.
Mr. Saleh an opposition leader reported that Mr. Deby said he was willing to hold such a forum when he met with opposition members late last year. "But then we never heard from him again."
"This only proves that Deby wants to go ahead and have these elections his way, on his own," Saleh said. "We cannot approve of such an operation."
Mr. Deby, seized power in a coup in 1990 then won elections in 1996 and 2001, he is now facing a swelling rebel movement in eastern Chad, a simmering battle with neighbouring Sudan and fiscal problems exacerbated by a recent rift with the World Bank over the use of oil revenues.
Much as there is broad agreement that Deby is an increasingly isolated leader, diplomats say the opposition - armed or otherwise - does not seem to be a coherent, effective force against the leader.
However, Mr. Saleh an opposition leader claims it looks like a question of time. "He's completely isolated. He's finished."