The Parliament of Senegal approved this Monday night to delay the presidential elections, which were scheduled for February 25, until December 15, 2024, thus giving its endorsement to the electoral postponement decreed last Saturday by the president of the country, Macky Sall, who is not running for office, but extends his term for 10 months. The session was plagued by incidents and concluded with the evacuation of the chamber, by members of the Gendarmerie, of a group of opposition deputies who rejected this delay and tried to prevent the vote. The Government has cut off the mobile internet connection throughout the country and has withdrawn the license of a private television station in a new curtailment of freedoms that attempts to quell the wave of protests that began on Sunday.
The postponement of the presidential elections, an unprecedented event, has spread not only indignation but uncertainty in Senegal, a priority country for Spain within West Africa, both in terms of development cooperation and migration control. Its coasts are one of the most important departure points for cayucos to the Canary Islands. The political and social instability, which reached its climax last June with the arrest of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, has contributed to increasing the number of young people who venture into irregular emigration. In 2023, 39,910 people managed to reach the Archipelago from the African coast, many of them Senegalese who had set sail from their country. According to the National Institute of Statistics, there were 83,260 Senegalese registered in Spain in 2022.
This Monday's parliamentary session, broadcast live by different media, continued throughout the day amid great tension. Opposition MP Guy Marius Sagna, from the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition, accused President Sall of maneuvering to achieve a third term and demanded that elections be held within the initially scheduled time frame. After attempting to delay the vote, he and other members of his political group took the stand to prevent it, prompting Parliament President Amadou Mame Diop to call officers to forcibly evict them.
Gap in the political class
The session also showed the deep division of the Senegalese political class. On the one hand, the deputies of Yewwi Askan Wi, who support Sonko, imprisoned since last summer, who are convinced that his alternative candidate, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, would have won the elections this month and who denounce what they call a “coup of Constitutional State” of President Sall. On the other, the Benno Bokk Yakaar government coalition, which has joined forces with the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) of Karim Wade to try to block the rise of what they call “the radical opposition.”
The dispute between both sides revolves around the list of 20 candidates approved by the Constitutional Court on January 20. In addition to Sonko, whose exclusion was assumed due to the two convictions for which he is imprisoned, Wade's candidacy was also annulled because he had dual Franco-Senegalese nationality at the time of submitting his dossier, a circumstance prohibited in the Constitution. All this foreshadowed a duel between Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the dolphin of the popular Sonko who has enormous citizen support, especially among young people, and the government candidate, the current Prime Minister Amadou Ba, considered a technocrat with little charisma and weakened by internal divisions. The fear of losing had spread in the Government environment.
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In protest of his exclusion, Wade's party proposed last week to investigate the Constitutional judges in Parliament for alleged irregularities in the proclamation of candidacies, an initiative that was approved thanks to the votes of the presidential majority. This conflict between the National Assembly and the high court was the reason given by Sall to decree the electoral postponement a few hours before the start of the campaign, which will allow him to remain president for 10 months longer than expected. The street reaction was immediate and on Sunday the first incidents emerged in Dakar and other cities, although so far they have not reached the intensity of the protests last June.
The extension of Macky Sall's mandate has generated a great reaction of rejection in much of Senegal, from civil society groups to magistrates, politicians and journalists, and has sown concern in the international community. The until now Secretary General of the Government, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, presented his immediate resignation. The singer Youssou Ndour, Sall's unfailing support in recent years, used his X account (formerly Twitter) to express his rejection of the electoral postponement, while Aminata Touré, former prime minister and collaborator of the president until a few years ago, accused him of organizing a “masquerade” and staging “a constitutional coup d'état.” The European Union's electoral observation mission, which had already begun to deploy, called for the holding of “transparent, inclusive and credible” elections as soon as possible.
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