The main opposition leader in Senegal, Ousmane Sonko, who has been in prison since last summer, has been excluded from the presidential elections that will be held starting next February 25 in this African country. The Constitutional Court made public this Saturday the final list of candidates for said elections, from which both Sonko and another important candidate, also the opposition Karim Wade, son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, fell out. Of the 93 candidacies presented, the high court has only authorized 20, among which are those of three candidates close to Sonko, as well as that of Amadou Ba, current prime minister and deputy of the outgoing president, Macky Sall, weakened by struggles internal. The elections are presented as the most open in the country’s recent history.
The exclusion from the presidential race of Ousmane Sonko, convicted in two separate judicial proceedings for defamation and corruption of youth and also accused of calling for insurrection and plotting against the State, was foreseeable, but it has been the subject of a long tirade and judicial looseness. His political party, Patriots of Senegal for Ethics, Work and Fraternity (Pastef), has been banned since last summer after promoting violent protests that were harshly repressed, resulting in more than 50 deaths. More than a thousand people, mostly young people, were imprisoned in the process, in a context of curtailment of freedoms and social and political tension.
However, three candidates close to Sonko have been validated by the Constitutional Court. These are Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Pastef’s number two and also currently in preventive detention, as well as Cheikh Tidiane Diéye and Habib Sy, both members of the opposition coalition Yewwi Askan Wi (YAW). Everything indicates that two of these three candidates will exclude themselves, predictably Diéye and Sy, so that all support goes to Faye, who has the full confidence of the imprisoned opposition leader. Other YAW leaders, such as Déthié Fall, maintain their options.
But Sonko is not the only opponent who has been excluded from the final list of candidates. Karim Wade, who had the support of the historic Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), is also out of the presidential race, although he has announced his intention to resort to international bodies to assert his candidacy. The Constitutional Court justified his decision on the fact that Wade had dual French-Senegalese nationality at the time of his appearance, a circumstance expressly prohibited by the Basic Law, and that he lied about it. On January 16, the candidate renounced his French nationality, but in the opinion of the high court it was already too late.
The exclusion of opponents Sonko and Wade could have cleared the way for the current prime minister, Amadou Ba, appointed by President Macky Sall. However, the reality is very different. This 62-year-old economist and fiscal policy expert, who managed the Economy and Foreign Affairs portfolios before being appointed head of Government in September 2022, faces both his lack of popular support and the rejection of a significant number of historical barons of the party in power, who consider him a late-breaking careerist. In fact, two Macky Sall loyalists who aspired to be his successor, former ministers Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne and Aly Ngouille Nidaye, are also candidates and will weaken Amadou Ba’s vote.
Macky Sall’s resignation to run for a third term, which is in fact prohibited in the Senegalese Constitution, opened a fight between a dozen possible candidates within the Alliance for the Republic (APR), the party he founded more than of 15 years and that led him to the presidency of the country. His choice of Amadou Ba has not been to everyone’s taste. Other major candidates validated by the Constitutional Court are the opponents Idrissa Seck, who came in second place in the 2019 presidential elections, and Khalifa Sall, former mayor of Dakar. Only two women are candidates, Anta Babacar Ngom and Rose Wardini, both with little political experience and few chances of success in one of the most uncertain presidential elections in Senegal’s recent history.
The intense protests experienced since 2021, after the first arrest of Ousmane Sonko, and particularly last June, when he was detained at his home before his imprisonment, presaged a turbulent context for these elections. However, the energetic reaction of the Government He has managed, for now, to demobilize the followers of the popular Senegalese opposition, who must decide from prison who to designate as his candidate.
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