Chad’s parliament on Friday overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment scrapping presidential term limits, in a move condemned by opponents of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno.

Deby was then elected head of state in May 2024 for five years, in a contested vote boycotted by a majority of opposition parties.

Friday’s parliamentary vote for the constitutional reform, presented by Deby’s Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), saw 236 of the 257 lawmakers in Chad’s parliament back the move, with no votes against.

Max Kemkoye, a spokesman for the opposition platform Group of Political Actors Consultation, told AFP: “There is no longer any difference between the MPS and the republic.”

Lawmakers from the opposition National Rally of Chadian Democrats — The Awakening (RNDT) boycotted the vote and left the chamber, an AFP reporter said.

In a letter addressed to lawmakers before the vote, the party’s leader, former prime minister Albert Pahimi Padacke, called the change “unconstitutional and authoritarian”.

– ‘Two bonus years’ –

The amendment now means Chad’s president can be elected for a seven-year term, and states that he can be re-elected without limit, instead of the current five-year term that is renewable only once.

The new longer mandate will only take effect at the next presidential election.

But Kemkoye said in a Facebook post on Friday morning that the change effectively “gives Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno two bonus years”.

The reform also provides for the creation of a deputy prime minister.

It extends the term of office of members of parliament by one year, from five to six years.

It also restores immunity for government members.

In January and February this year, Chad organised parliamentary elections — the first since 2015 — and a vote for the Senate for the first time in the country’s independent history.

The vote was largely won by the president’s MPS.

The main opposition party, the Transformers, described the electoral process as a “resounding failure” because of calls for a “massive boycott” by the party and other opposition groups, predicting “pre-fabricated results”.

Transformers leader Succes Masra — one of the president’s fiercest critics — was sentenced to 20 years in jail in August, on charges of inciting inter-communal violence on May 14 in Mandakao, the southwestern Logone-Occidental region, where 42 people were killed, most of them women and children.

His lawyer called the prosecution a weaponisation of the courts.