Chad set to postpone November vote: election panel

Legislative elections in Chad planned for November are set to be postponed to May, a member of the electoral panel organising the vote told AFP Monday.

The voting date has been pushed back several times in the central African state. The original mandate of the legislature expired in June 2015, but has been prolonged.

"We have scheduled the holding of the legislative elections for the month of May according to our timeline, which will be examined and possibly adopted on Friday," said Abdramane Djasnabaille of the election commission (CNDP).

The 15-strong National Framework for Political Dialogue was formed in April and is made up of members of the ruling majority and the opposition.

One of its tasks is to set up the Independent Electoral Committee (CENI).

The delay to the vote was because of the need to set up an electoral code, the CENI itself and also to carry out a census of the voting population that takes account of bounder changes, said Djasnabaille.

In April, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno announced there would be legislative elections this month, the first since 2011.

Since then however, the process has been beset with delays, with the parliament's mandate, which had been due to end in June 2015, extended by a constitutional law.

On Monday, a member of the government said he was not certain the vote would be in 2019, given the financial crisis and the situation in the north of the country.

Since August, the army has been trying to deal with rebel attacks in the north bordering Libya.

Chad, which has focussed its economy on oil revenue for some 15 years, is struggling with a serious economic crisis, caused mainly to the falling price of crude oil in 2014-2015.

Despite the oil resources, the country's population is among the poorest in the world.