Senegal: MPs are considering postponing presidential elections

Senegalese MPs are considering this Monday a controversial bill to postpone the presidential elections, announced by head of state Macky Sall. Clashes broke out between opponents and police in the capital Dakar. Debate on the text promises to be heated as a vote on it will be delayed by a maximum of six months and whose approval, requiring a three-fifths majority of the 165 MPs, is not certain.

Macky Sall announced on Saturday, hours before the opening of the election campaign, that he had signed a decree to postpone the presidential elections, which were scheduled to take place on February 25. For the first time since 1963, presidential elections by direct universal suffrage were postponed in Senegal, a country that has never experienced a coup, a rarity on the continent.

Macky Sall’s statement sparked an outcry and raised fears of a fever outbreak in the country, which is known as West Africa’s island of stability but has suffered various episodes of deadly unrest since 2021. The President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, this Monday called on the Senegalese to resolve their “political dispute through consultation, understanding and dialogue” and asked the authorities to organize elections as soon as possible, in conditions of transparency, peace and national harmony.”

Two oppositionists excluded from the list of candidates

The postponement of the vote was announced amid conflict between the National Assembly and the Constitutional Council, which approved twenty candidates in January, a record, but rejected dozens of others. Two opposition leaders were excluded: Ousmane Sonko, who has been in prison since July, and Karim Wade, a minister and son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012).

Wade questioned the integrity of two constitutional judges and called for the elections to be delayed. At his initiative, the Assembly last week approved the creation of a commission to investigate the conditions for the approval of candidates. And contrary to all expectations, deputies of the presidential camp supported this approach.

The support also fueled suspicions about the government’s plan to delay the presidential election and avoid defeat. The presidential camp’s candidate, Prime Minister Amadou Ba, is contested within his own ranks and faces dissidents. By contrast, the anti-system Bassiro Diomaie Fay, whose candidacy was approved by the Constitutional Council although he has been in prison since 2023, has in recent weeks established himself as a credible candidate to win, a nightmare scenario for the presidential camp.

Opposition MP Ayib Daffe assured on social networks that parliamentarians from the presidential camp proposed at a preparatory meeting for the session to extend the mandate of the outgoing president for one year. According to the electoral code, a decree setting the date for new presidential elections must be published no later than 80 days before the elections. President Sall, elected in 2012 for a five-year term and then re-elected in 2019 for seven years and who is not a candidate this time, risks remaining in office after the end of his mandate, which is April 2.