Chad’s ruling party wins parliamentary majority, provisional results show

N’DJAMENA, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Chad’s ruling party won two-thirds of the seats in the legislative election which was boycotted by many in the opposition last month, provisional results showed on Sunday, reinforcing President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s hold on power.

Results of the Dec. 29 election seal the oil-producing Central African nation’s transition to constitutional rule more than three years after Deby seized control following the sudden death of his father and long-standing predecessor Idriss Deby Itno.

Deby’s party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, secured 124 of the 188 seats at the National Assembly, the national electoral body said. The participation rate was put at 51.56%.

The vote, which also included municipal and regional elections, was Chad’s first in more than a decade.

But opposition leader Succes Masra’s Transformateurs party and several others boycotted the election, saying the vote was skewed and lacked transparency. The government has denied this.

Deby was elected president in another disputed vote in May, three years after declaring himself interim leader when rebels killed his father on the battlefield.

Since Deby’s election, Chad – a key Western ally in the fight against Islamic militants in the Sahel region – ended its defence cooperation pact with France and threatened to withdraw from a regional multinational security force.

The severing of military ties with France echoes moves by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which all kicked out French troops and fostered closer ties with Russia after a string of coups in West and Central Africa’s Sahel region.

This week, security forces foiled an attack on the presidency that the government referred to as a “destabilisation attempt”.