N’DJAMENA, Chad
Succès Masra, who came second in Chad's presidential election, announced Sunday he had lodged a request with the Constitutional Council to have the vote annulled.
Masra was acting after dozens
of activists from his party were arrested and accused of having forged
documents to get illegal access to vote counts.
"With the help of our
lawyers, we have today filed a request with the Constitutional Council to
reveal the truth at the ballot boxes," said Masra in a Facebook post.
"Our request is for the
annulment, pure and simple, of this electoral farce," Sitack Yombatina,
vice president of Masra's Transformers Party, told AFP.
"All the evidence is in
the USB keys," attached to the request lodged with the Constitutional
Council, he added.
They included video footage of
voting boxes being stuffed, thefts, threats, "but most of all ballot boxes
that were taken away by the soldiers to be counted elsewhere", said
Yombatina.
Elections officials on
Thursday declared junta leader General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno the winner with 61.03 percent
of the vote against Masra's 18.53 percent.
Masra had already claimed
victory and warned that Deby's team would try to rig the result.
Dozens of activists from
Masra's party have been arrested accused of forgery and using false documents
during this week's presidential election, a legal source told AFP on Saturday.
The party has denounced the
arrests and the "ridiculous" charges against their activists.
Masra is a former fierce
critic of Deby. Although Deby appointed him prime minister four months before
the presidential election, Masra ran against him.
The country's opposition,
which has been violently repressed and its leading figures barred from
standing, had in any case dismissed him as a stooge, allowed to run to give the
campaign a "democratic veneer".
Early in the campaign,
observers predicted a massive win for Deby, 40, whose top rival was killed
earlier this year.
Deby was proclaimed
transitional president three years ago by his fellow generals after his father,
iron-fisted president Idriss Deby
Itno, had been killed by rebels after 30 years in power.
The definitive election
results are expected by May 23 at the latest.
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