On Sunday, protesters against President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone Senegal’s elections until February 25 prepared to discuss a bill that would formally postpone the polls. As a result, police made arrests and used tear gas on opposition supporters.
Following the rejection of the news of the election postponement on Saturday by prominent opposition personalities and presidential contenders, protesters staged a rally in the capital city of Dakar. The regional organization of West Africa, ECOWAS, had pushed for discussion, and opposition leaders had urged people to protect democracy.
Former prime minister Aminata Touré and one of the presidential contenders, Anta Babacar Ngom, were among those taken into custody as the demonstrations expanded throughout the nation’s capital.
While the private Walf television channel was live-broadcasting the protest, the authorities turned off its signal. In a statement on the social networking platform X, the worldwide Committee to Defend Journalists denounced the signal-cutting and urged Senegalese authorities to guarantee that “journalists can work without hindrance.”
In a time when the continent is grappling with a recent spike in coups, analysts say the Senegalese issue is testing one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Due to violent altercations between opposition supporters and the disqualification of two opposition leaders prior to the now-canceled presidential election, Senegal has been plunged into political unrest.
Sall’s decision to postpone the presidential election was challenged by a number of opposition leaders, who pointed to a disagreement between the parliament and the judiciary on the final list of candidates and those who were disqualified. Out of the twenty contenders, at least two declared they would carry out their planned Sunday campaign launch.
Sall’s term is set to expire on April 2. According to Senegal’s electoral code, elections must be announced 80 days in advance, therefore the earliest a fresh vote may be held is the final week of April.
Former minister and opposition candidate Thierno Alassane Sall wrote on social networking site X on Saturday, saying, “I am starting my electoral campaign tomorrow, in Dakar, with the candidates who have chosen to preserve the Constitution.”
As Déthié Fall, another opposition contender, declared, “We will start our campaign and we call on other candidates to do the same,” former mayor of Dakar’s capital Khalifa Sall urged the populace to “join together to safeguard our democracy.”
In a post on Twitter, the U.S. Department of State called on “all actors in (the) electoral process to engage peacefully to rapidly arrange a new date and the conditions for a timely, free and fair election,” citing Senegal’s “strong heritage of democracy and peaceful transitions of power.”
Sall referenced a disagreement between the federal parliamentarians and the judiciary on the disqualifying procedure and the purported dual nationality of the candidates in order to postpone the election by revoke the decree that started the electoral process.
Opposition leaders, however, contend that the Senegalese leader is powerless to postpone the vote. The highest electoral body in Senegal, the Constitutional Council, is authorized by the country’s constitution to reschedule the election in specific situations, such as “the death, permanent disability or withdrawal” of a candidate.
His declaration came after the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party, whose candidate Karim Wade was among those ruled ineligible, requested a postponement of the vote.
Wade declared that delaying the vote would “make it possible to heal the damage suffered” by those who were disqualified and accused two judges of being corrupted during the disqualification process.
(AP)
