The President of Senegal, Macky Sall, will present Wednesday to the National Assembly and the Council of Ministers a bill for general amnesty on the facts related to political demonstrations that took place between 2021 and 2024
Marcky Sall, who was speaking at the opening of the national dialogue at the Abdou Diouf International Conference Center, in the city of Diamniadio, about 30 kilometers from Dakar, said that with this initiative he intended to put an end to the deep crisis triggered in the country following Marcky Sall, who speaking at the opening of the national dialogue at the Abdou Diouf International Conference Center, in the city of Diamniadio, about 30 kilometers from Dakar, he said that with this initiative he intended to put an end to the deep crisis triggered in the country following the postponement of the presidential elections, initially planned for the 25th of this month and set a new date.
“Our country is at an important crossroads (…). My wish is that we can move towards peaceful, inclusive and transparent elections,” he said before dozens of representatives from different sectors of society.
“I only have one objective: to reach a consensus on the date of the next presidential elections”, he added, reiterating that he intends to leave power when his mandate ends, on April 2, as he confirmed last week in a television interview.
The national dialogue was, however, boycotted by the vast majority of presidential candidates whose candidacy was approved. In fact, only two of them agreed to meet with Sall on Monday, before the start of the event: Amadou Ba, current prime minister and candidate of the ruling coalition Benno Bokk Yaakaar (United for Hope, in the Wolof language), and Mahammed Dionne, former prime minister also under Sall’s presidency.
Last Friday, the opposition platform FC25, which groups 16 of the 19 candidates, rejected the national dialogue, accusing the President of violating the Constitution.
“Its main objective is to try to exclude the candidates selected by the Constitutional Council and, eventually, with its dialogue, move towards a (new) mandate, which we systematically reject”, declared the group’s representative, Cheikh Tidiane Youm, at a conference press in the Senegalese capital.
The opposition’s rejection of Sall’s offer comes at a time of great political tension due to the postponement of the elections decreed on February 3 by the President and declared illegal by the Constitutional Council.
The Constitutional Council considered “contrary to the Constitution” the parliamentary vote that, under the auspices of Sall, postponed the elections from the 25th of this month to the 15th of December.
The change in the election date triggered violent street protests, often harshly dispersed by the police, in which at least four people were killed.
The opposition demanded that Sall set a date before the end of his term. The head of state defended the electoral moratorium due to “the controversy over a candidate whose dual nationality (French and Senegalese) was revealed after the publication of the definitive list”, something that the Senegalese Constitution does not allow for presidential candidates.
For the President, this discovery revealed an “alleged case of corruption of judges” that called into question the candidate selection process. However, the vast majority of the opposition rejected the postponement of the elections as a “constitutional coup d’état”.