The transitional president, Mahamat Idriss Deby announced that he granted his pardon ” to all those who are involved, convicted or not, having committed damage during the bloody repression of October 20, which claimed between 75 and more than 300 victims according to the sources, before calling on them to return from exile. A message addressed in particular to the leaders of the protest, Success Masra and Max Loalngar, who had been pushed into exile. Why is the transitional president reaching out to opponents in exile today?
First objective for Mahamat Idriss Déby, to restore an image totally degraded by the bloody repression of October 20 in Chad and in the world, according to several specialists in the country.
The transitional president had also been under pressure for months from Chad’s financial partners, who were asking him to get the country out of ” political deadlock in which he has been immersed since that date. “ Emmanuel Macron probably said the same thing to Mahamat Idriss Déby during their last tete-a-tete in Paris in early June “says Roland Marchal, a specialist in the region, “ especially since the Masra Success campaign in Germany, France and the United States has borne fruit in certain political circles “, he adds.
There was also the signal launched by this attempt to create a Chadian armed group in the north of the Central African Republic, “ he realized that it was better to have his political opponents inside rather than outside the country “, according to the same source.
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Finally, the departure into exile of the main leaders of the challenge to the power of Mahamat Idriss Déby has enabled the transitional power to carry out all the stages leading to the organization of a constitutional referendum based on a decentralized unitary state, which was hotly contested, with virtually no resistance from federalists, who had become sluggish.
” The political momentum is already underway, the transitional president has chosen his time well to ask his fiercest opponents to return to the country “, analyzes Roland Marchal, researcher at the CNRS.
This appeal (…) is not at all serious, because the president of the transition acts in the manner of God the Father, who has the power to forgive all the sinners that we are. He ignores the responsibility incumbent on him as a major actor in these events, as the leader of this army which shot and killed in cold blood from November 20 to 11, 2022… As far as I am concerned concern, don’t blame me. We need a truly independent investigation into the events that took place on this Black Thursday in October.
Max Loalngar, coordinator of the Wakit Tama movement, rejects the president’s outstretched hand