Chad votes

Chadians will go to the polls on Mai 6 as military ruler Mahamat Deby wants to get elected as president of the unruly central African country. Opposition parties call for a boycott saying the elections won’t be fair as Deby controls the constitutional court, state media and the election body. The European Union nevertheless helping fund the vote as Western power worry Chad will slide into instability like other Sahel countries such as Mali. Chad is surrounded by neighbours from Niger to the Central African Republic where Russian mercenaries are active and is impacted by civil war in Sudan from where some 750.000 people had fled to eastern Chad, one of world’s poorest regions. Western powers hope the vote will pass uneventfully and will be followed by parliamentary elections, which would be the first since 2011.