Senegal’s president has canceled the election for his alternative three weeks earlier than voting was set to happen, saying {that a} dispute between the legislative and judicial arms of presidency wanted to be resolved first.
Talking on Saturday afternoon from the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, his phrases live-streamed on his social media platforms, President Macky Sall stated that he was repealing the decree convening the electoral physique, successfully suspending elections indefinitely.
However his opponents stated he was primarily finishing up a coup d’état, and accused him of treason.
“For the primary time in its historical past, Senegal has simply suffered a coup d’état,” Ousmane Diallo, a researcher with Amnesty Worldwide, posted on X. In an interview, he stated that the dispute Mr. Sall cited as the explanation for the postponement was “a manufactured disaster, a disaster created in every week to cease the electoral course of.”
After the nation’s constitutional council printed lists of permitted candidates for the election, a few of them had been discovered to have been permitted regardless of holding twin nationality, one thing presidential candidates are usually not allowed in Senegal.
One was Karim Wade, the son of President Sall’s predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade. The youthful Mr. Wade, whose mom is from France, had renounced his French citizenship with a view to run, however could have achieved so solely after the constitutional courtroom rejected him as a presidential candidate. After he was blocked from working, his get together accused two of the courtroom’s judges of corruption, and it seems that these allegations kind the premise of President Sall’s resolution to cancel the election.
In his speech on Saturday Mr. Sall portrayed it as a dispute between the nationwide meeting, which launched an inquiry into the allegations, and the constitutional courtroom, saying issues had reached a disaster level. The state of affairs, he stated, “might significantly injury the credibility of the election” in a rustic that “can not afford a brand new disaster.”
Mr. Sall had spent years refusing to verify whether or not he would strive for a 3rd time period in workplace. Senegal’s Structure limits presidents to 2 consecutive phrases. However in 2016, when Mr. Sall was 4 years into his first time period, voters modified the Structure to scale back phrases to 5 years from seven, which he argued reset the clock, permitting him to run a 3rd time.
However final July, he stated he wouldn’t run once more, and later named the prime minister, Amadou Ba, because the governing get together candidate for the 2024 election.
He gave no new date for an election in his tackle to the nation on Saturday, however stated he was nonetheless dedicated to staying out of the race himself.
“My solemn dedication to not run within the presidential election stays unchanged,” he stated in his live-streamed tackle, earlier than the digital camera minimize to pictures of the golden lions outdoors the presidential palace, and the Senegalese flag embossed with the president’s initials fluttering in gradual movement.
Half an hour after the president’s tackle on Saturday, three younger males jumped off a bus in Ouakam, a neighborhood in Dakar, and purchased cups of spiced espresso as they mentioned the information of the canceled election. One stated that Mr. Sall was simply testing individuals, to see if they might take to the streets.
“That is the most important coup d’état ever,” stated one other, Abdou Lahat, sipping his Touba espresso.
Regardless of a warning from the U.S. embassy that violent protests might escape, most residents of Senegal’s capital, Dakar, merely continued with their day on Saturday. However many had been sad.
“We wish to change all these individuals,” stated Fatou Diouf, a younger girl promoting cloth in a Dakar market on Saturday afternoon, referring to the nation’s leaders.
Koumba Sakho, a 28-year-old who works in a bakery within the metropolis heart, agreed. “The Senegalese will not settle for anybody being imposed on them,” she stated.
Within the wake of the announcement of the canceled election, consultants scrambled to evaluate the legality of the president’s transfer.
One stated that by canceling the decree convening the electoral physique when he did, the president was violating the structure and the electoral code. One other stated solely the constitutional courtroom might postpone the election, after which provided that one of many candidates died.
A presidential candidate, Thierno Sall, accused the president of treason.
“Macky Sall is aware of that his candidate, Amadou Ba, can not win the presidential election,” he stated in a press release. “He’s afraid of the results of his actions throughout all his years on the head of our nation.”
Senegal has, thus far, been spared the navy coups which have lately convulsed different former French colonies that neighbor it within the arid Sahel area simply south of the Sahara. However the president’s critics on Saturday accused him of finishing up a constitutional coup.
“It is a Louis Bonaparte 1851-style coup,” stated Ndongo Samba Sylla, an economist, referring to Napoleon’s nephew, an elected president of France who, when his time period expired, declared himself emperor.
The day earlier than Mr. Sall’s announcement, Mr. Sylla sat in a café on Dakar’s palm-lined coastal street, the Corniche, expressing concern that Senegal’s leaders had been about to destroy its establishments.
Lengthy lauded as a regional mannequin of democracy, Senegal’s electoral course of was in actual fact “a system to cheat,” Mr. Sylla stated, reflecting a dynamic mirrored throughout Francophone Africa: growing older presidents who’re unpopular with their youthful electorates, with costs frequently introduced in opposition to potential opponents.
“Senegal just isn’t democratic, for me,” he stated. “Democracy is about political equality. We don’t have that.”
Just like the nations now led by juntas, Senegal has skilled a wave of youth discontent, with widespread demonstrations in opposition to a authorities that many see as repressive, out of contact, in cahoots with France, and unable to create enough alternatives for younger individuals, who dominate the nation demographically.
These issues have led many younger Senegalese to show to a politician who portrayed himself as a savior from the nation’s elites, from France and from financial hardship: 49-year-old Ousmane Sonko.
Mr. Sonko, who’s in jail and barred from standing within the election, his get together dissolved, has variously been charged with calling for rebel, with defamation of the nation’s tourism minister and with rape. He was acquitted of rape, however convicted of “corrupting youth” for appearing immorally towards the younger therapeutic massage therapist who accused him of raping her.
His authorized battles have solely appeared to gasoline Mr. Sonko’s recognition, sending hundreds into the streets, bashing pots and pans all through the nation in his help and in defiance of the federal government.
Not less than 16 individuals had been killed within the demonstrations, based on Human Rights Watch.
