After three decades in power, Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno died on Tuesday from wounds suffered on the battlefield, the army said in a shock announcement just a day after the 68-year-old was re-elected to a sixth term. A son of Deby Itno is to take over as president in place of his father, according to a charter released by the presidency on Wednesday.
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In this file photo taken on April 11, 2021 Four Star General and head of the Republican Guard in Chad, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno (C), 37,
son of Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno is seen at a polling station in N’djamena.
It said General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, 37, who on Tuesday was named transitional leader as head of a military council following his father’s death, will “occupy the functions of the president of the republic” and also serve as head of the armed forces.
The charter repeals the preceding constitution and will be implemented as the “basic law of the republic,” according to its terms.
The younger Deby has also been named “supreme head of the armed forces,” it said.
Deby’s son had overseen his father’s security as head of the elite presidential guard and had often appeared alongside him.
He signed a decree Tuesday setting out a military council with 15 generals, including himself and 14 others known to have been part of the late president’s circle of loyalists.
The council is tasked with an 18-month transition toward “free and democratic elections.”
Mahamat Idriss Deby also chairs the “military transition council, the council of ministers, the councils and superior committees of national defence,” according to the charter.
The new head of state will promulgate legislation adopted by the 69 members of the national transition council, who are named directly by Mahamat.
The Transition Charter, which contains 95 articles, also guarantees “freedom of opinion, conscience and worship.”
A transition government has been set up, whose members are named by the new president.
“The members of the army who are called to the transition government are discharged from all military duties,” the charter said.
Here are some of Africa’s other longest-serving leaders, some of whom change the constitution, crush the opposition and use fear and violence to maintain their grip on power.
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From top left, Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema
and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. By AFP
[SIZE=6]More than 30 years [/SIZE]
Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema is Africa’s longest-serving leader, still in power after 41 years. He deposed his uncle in a 1979 coup, and became “the country’s god” with “all power over men and things”, state radio said.
Obiang, the world’s most enduring non-royal head of state, was last re-elected in 2016.
Cameroonian President Paul Biya has been in office more than 38 years. He was re-elected in 2018 for a seventh term.
Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso has held power for a total of 36 years and was re-elected for a fourth term after elections on March 21.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, was re-elected in January with his main rival Bobi Wine claiming the election was rigged.
In southern Africa’s tiny Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, King Mswati III is the continent’s last absolute monarch. He ascended the throne in 1986.
[SIZE=6]Even longer[/SIZE]
Ethiopia’s late emperor Haile Selassie holds the record for the longest time in power on the African continent. After reigning for 44 years, he was ousted in 1974.
Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi, who ruled with an iron fist for nearly 42 years, was killed in 2011 after an armed rebellion that later turned into a civil war.
Omar Bongo Ondimba governed oil-rich Gabon for more than 41 years until his death from cancer in 2009.
Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos stepped down in September 2017 having led his oil-rich country for 38 years.
Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe, who died in 2019, was in power for 37 years.