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Observers, Voters Ready For Chad Presidential Vote Sunday
N'DJAMENA, May 19 (Islamonline &News Agencies) - Some five million voters and 32 international observers were gearing up for Sunday's presidential vote in the Muslim state of Chad, which will see the country's President Idriss Deby face off against six other candidates, news agencies said.
This is the African country's second democratic presidential election since it gained independence in 1960 from French colonial rule.
On Saturday, Chad's interior ministry reportedly announced all land and air borders would be closed as of midnight in preparation for the vote.
On Friday, during a final campaign rally, Deby predicted he would win in Sunday's first round, and called his six presidential contenders political "adventurers", AFP reported.
According to Agence France Presse, the opposition parties have meanwhile accused Deby and his supporters of rigging the vote in advance.
Saleh Kebzabo, one of Deby's main adversaries and a former agriculture minister under former ruler Hissane Habre, reportedly said that 80 percent of people working for Chad's independent electoral commission were from Deby's ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement, AFP said.
According to allAfrica.com the International Francophonie Organization (OIF) says it is sending a mission to monitor Chad's presidential elections on Sunday. It said in a press release that the mission at the request of the Chadian authorities is under a program of assistance to the country's electoral process that started in January 2001.
The OIF mission, led by the former Organization of African Unity (OAU), Secretary General Ide Oumarou, comprises parliamentarians and experts from Canada, Laos, Macedonia, Morocco, Rwanda and Senegal.
The Organization, which has sent some 20 electoral missions to Member States from 1998, said it would be responsible for the co-ordination of international observers in Chad during the exercise. OIF groups 55 States from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
AFP reported that Sudan and Algeria, along with several small non-governmental organizations, have also sent observers to the poll, which has received funding assistance from the United Nations.
According to AFP, Deby is pinning his presidential hopes on a multi-billion dollar oil project which he says will catapult the impoverished country into the ranks of richer, developing nations. The Doba project in southern Chad, estimated to cost 3.7 billion dollars and to run through to Cameroon, is expected to increase annual government revenues by between 45 and 50 percent.
Deby, who toppled former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre in 1990, was elected in the country's first multi-party presidential poll in 1996, which, according to AFP, his opponents said was marred by widespread fraud.
The other candidates against Deby are southerner Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue of the Union for Renewal and Democracy (URD); former prime minister Kassire Coumakoye; the leader of the Party for Freedom and Development (PLD), Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh; the leader of the Union for Democracy and the Republic (UDR) Jean-Bawoyeu Alingue; and the head of the Republic Action Federation (FAR), Ngarledjy Yorongar.
Instability and violence stemming mostly from tension between the Muslim Arabic speaking majority in the north and the Negro-Christian in the south have marked Chad's post-independence history, the BBC website said.
In 1969 Muslim dissatisfaction with Chad's first President, Ngarta Tombalbaye - a Christian southerner - developed into a civil war. Tension continued in the country until 1996 when Deby was confirmed president in Chad's first election.
However, the BBC online service said that trouble continued to simmer, and in 1998 a new-armed insurgency began in the north, led by Deby's former defense chief, Youssouf Togoimi.
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