Senegal: President Macky Sall announces indefinite postponement of presidential elections

He has not yet set a date for the elections. But Senegal’s head of state Macky Sall, who is not seeking a third term, announced on Saturday that he had rescinded his decree calling presidential elections for Feb. 25 after setting up a parliamentary commission to investigate two Constitutional Council judges whose integrity in the electoral process is disputed.

The Constitutional Court excluded dozens of contenders from the vote, including two opposition leaders, anti-system candidate Ousmane Sonko and Karim Wade, a minister and son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade.

“I signed the decree of February 3, 2024, revoking the decree” of November 26, 2023, calling presidential elections for February 25, 2024, the Senegalese head of state said in an address to the Nation a few hours before the opening of the elections. an election campaign for the election of the President, for which twenty candidates had to fight. “I am initiating an open national dialogue to create the conditions for free, transparent and inclusive elections,” said Macky Sall.

First time in Senegal

For the first time since 1963, Senegal’s presidential elections by direct universal suffrage have been postponed. President Sall, by decree of November 29, 2023, scheduled presidential elections for February 25. At the end of December, he promised to transfer power to the elected president at the end of the elections at the end of April and confirmed this several times. once.

Elected in 2012 to a seven-year term and re-elected in 2019 to a five-year term, he announced in July 2023 that he was not seeking another term. In September he named Prime Minister Amadou Ba, a member of the president’s party, as his successor.

Is the government afraid of losing the presidential election?

The National Assembly approved on Wednesday, after heated debate, the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the process. A large number of members of the presidential camp voted for him. This support caused problems. Opponents of the outgoing president suspect a plan to postpone the presidential election because those in power are afraid of losing it.

Community Development Minister Theresa Fay, also a leader of the presidential camp, spoke on Friday in favor of delaying the presidential election by at least six months. Close to Macky Sall, she believed the electoral process, which saw 20 candidates approved by the Constitutional Council in January, was “tainted” by irregularities at private television TFM.

The former ruling party, whose candidate is Karim Wade, announced that it had submitted to the National Assembly on Friday a “bill regarding the postponement” of the February 25 presidential elections. “Our parliamentary initiative is motivated by numerous incidents and protests that distorted the electoral process, highlighting serious dysfunctions” and “even more so by the elimination of candidates,” said the Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS), which leads the parliamentary group composed of 27 deputies out of 165 in the National Assembly.

Karim Wade renounces French citizenship

In addition, one of the 20 candidates approved by the Council, Rose Vardini, was remanded in custody on Friday evening by the Criminal Investigation Department (Dic, the judicial police) for “forgery, use of forgery and fraud in sentencing,” AFP reported. I found out from a police source. According to this source, she was arrested as part of an investigation into her alleged French-Senegalese citizenship.

Any candidate for the presidency “shall be exclusively Senegalese by nationality,” the Constitution states. Candidate Karim Wade was excluded from the February 25 vote due to his dual Senegalese and French citizenship, according to the Constitutional Council. He has since renounced his French citizenship.

He condemned the “scandalous decision” and the “new legal conspiracy” before his party initiated a process in the National Assembly that resulted in the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry.