Chad faces crises ahead of December elections, warn bishops

“We still do not understand why Chadians cannot accept each other, dialogue without a spirit of domination and seek only the common national interest.”

Catholic bishops in Chad said the country faced an array of crisis ahead of elections this month. An appeal issued by the bishops’ conference ahead of their plenary said that floods, terrorist attacks and their humanitarian and economic consequences had devastated the country over the past year.

In late October, Boko Haram militants attacked a garrison in the Lake Chad basin, killing 40 soldiers. Meanwhile floods have affected large parts of west and central Africa, with Chad the worst-hit country. According to the UN, 1.9 million people had been affected by floods in Chad as of 31 October.

Archbishop Edmond Djitangar of N’Djamena, the president of the bishops’ conference, said these challenges would inform discussions at their two-week plenary, which began on 3 December.

He noted that the Church was “gradually taking root in Chad”, which has a population of around 18 million. The 2014-15 demographic estimates recorded that 52.1 per cent of the population was Muslim, 23.9 per cent Protestant, 20 per cent Catholic, 0.3 per cent animist, 0.2 per cent other Christian, 2.8 per cent no religion, and 0.7 per cent unspecified.

“As usual, we will exercise our collegiality for two weeks in examining different aspects of the life of our Church, the Family of God, which is gradually taking root in Chad. We will evaluate the progress of evangelisation in the social and economic context of our country,” Archbishop Djitangar said.

He criticised the lack of dialogue and worsening corruption among the political classes, warning this could upset the democratic process during elections to parliament and to regional and local offices on 29 December.

“From a political point of view, our assembly is situated in the context of legislative, regional and municipal elections that are supposed to restore stable democratic institutions in our country. But we still do not understand why Chadians cannot accept each other, dialogue without a spirit of domination and seek only the common national interest,” he said.

Djitangar warned that without dialogue between political leaders, “we are destined to move forward by trial and error or by running away from the failures of the process and of normalising public life. The failures accumulate and lead to a dead end.”

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