2024-02-03 15:14:00
Thunderbolt in Senegal. President Macky Sall announced this Saturday that he had repealed his decree setting February 25 as the date of the presidential election, after the establishment of a parliamentary commission investigating two judges of the Constitutional Council whose integrity in the electoral process is contested.
« I signed the decree of February 3, 2024 repealing the decree » of November 26, 2023 setting the presidential election for February 25, 2024, declared the Senegalese head of state in his speech to the Nation. However, this announcement came a few hours before the opening of the electoral campaign for the presidential vote for which twenty candidates were to compete, without two opposition leaders.
« I will initiate an open national dialogue, in order to create the conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election », said the head of state, without giving a later date for the vote.
The Constitutional Council under pressure
The day before, an official from the presidential camp in Senegal had spoken out in favor of postponing the February 25 presidential election for at least six months. The Minister of Community Development, Thérèse Faye, declared on private television TFM that the electoral process which resulted in January in the validation of 20 candidates by the Constitutional Council had been “ screwed up » by irregularities.
This is the first time since 1963 that a presidential election by direct universal suffrage has been postponed in Senegal. As a reminder, President Sall had set the presidential election for February 25 in a decree dated November 29, 2023. He had promised at the end of December to hand over power to the elected president at the end of the election at the beginning of April and reiterated this several times. .
Elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, he announced in July 2023 that he was not a candidate for a new term. He appointed Prime Minister Amadou Bâ, an official of the presidential party, as his successor in September. The Constitutional Council excluded dozens of contenders from the ballot.
Among them, two opposition leaders, the anti-system candidate Ousmane Sonko, in prison since July 2023 notably for calling for insurrection and disqualified by the Council following a conviction for defamation in a separate case, and Karim Wade , minister and son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012).
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