Senegal’s president has canceled the election for his substitute three weeks earlier than voting was set to happen, saying {that a} dispute between the legislative and judicial arms of presidency wanted to be resolved first.
Speaking on Saturday afternoon from the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, his phrases live-streamed on his social media platforms, President Macky Sall mentioned that he was repealing the decree convening the electoral physique, successfully suspending elections indefinitely.
But his opponents mentioned he was primarily finishing up a coup d’état, and accused him of treason.
“For the first time in its history, Senegal has just suffered a coup d’état,” Ousmane Diallo, a researcher with Amnesty International, posted on X. In an interview, he mentioned that the dispute Mr. Sall cited as the rationale for the postponement was “a manufactured crisis, a crisis created in a week to stop the electoral process.”
After the nation’s constitutional council printed lists of permitted candidates for the election, a few of them have been discovered to have been permitted regardless of holding twin nationality, one thing presidential candidates will not be allowed in Senegal.
One was Karim Wade, the son of President Sall’s predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade. The youthful Mr. Wade, whose mom is from France, had renounced his French citizenship with the intention to run, however might have accomplished so solely after the constitutional courtroom rejected him as a presidential candidate. After he was blocked from working, his celebration accused two of the courtroom’s judges of corruption, and it seems that these allegations type the idea of President Sall’s choice to cancel the election.
In his speech on Saturday Mr. Sall portrayed it as a dispute between the nationwide meeting, which launched an inquiry into the allegations, and the constitutional courtroom, saying issues had reached a disaster level. The scenario, he mentioned, “could seriously damage the credibility of the election” in a rustic that “cannot afford a new crisis.”
Mr. Sall had spent years refusing to verify whether or not he would strive for a 3rd time period in workplace. Senegal’s Constitution limits presidents to 2 consecutive phrases. But in 2016, when Mr. Sall was 4 years into his first time period, voters modified the Constitution to scale back phrases to 5 years from seven, which he argued reset the clock, permitting him to run a 3rd time.
But final July, he mentioned he wouldn’t run once more, and later named the prime minister, Amadou Ba, because the governing celebration candidate for the 2024 election.
He gave no new date for an election in his handle to the nation on Saturday, however mentioned he was nonetheless dedicated to staying out of the race himself.
“My solemn commitment not to run in the presidential election remains unchanged,” he mentioned in his live-streamed handle, earlier than the digital camera minimize to photographs of the golden lions outdoors the presidential palace, and the Senegalese flag embossed with the president’s initials fluttering in sluggish movement.
Half an hour after the president’s handle on Saturday, three younger males jumped off a bus in Ouakam, a neighborhood in Dakar, and purchased cups of spiced espresso as they mentioned the information of the canceled election. One mentioned that Mr. Sall was simply testing individuals, to see if they might take to the streets.
“This is the biggest coup d’état ever,” mentioned one other, Abdou Lahat, sipping his Touba espresso.
Despite a warning from the U.S. embassy that violent protests might escape, most residents of Senegal’s capital, Dakar, merely continued with their day on Saturday. But many have been sad.
“We want to change all these people,” mentioned Fatou Diouf, a younger girl promoting cloth in a Dakar market on Saturday afternoon, referring to the nation’s leaders.
Koumba Sakho, a 28-year-old who works in a bakery within the metropolis heart, agreed. “The Senegalese will no longer accept anyone being imposed on them,” she mentioned.
In the wake of the announcement of the canceled election, consultants scrambled to evaluate the legality of the president’s transfer.
One mentioned that by canceling the decree convening the electoral physique when he did, the president was violating the structure and the electoral code. Another mentioned solely the constitutional courtroom might postpone the election, after which provided that one of many candidates died.
A presidential candidate, Thierno Sall, accused the president of treason.
“Macky Sall knows that his candidate, Amadou Ba, cannot win the presidential election,” he mentioned in a press release. “He is afraid of the consequences of his actions during all his years at the head of our country.”
Senegal has, thus far, been spared the army coups which have just lately convulsed different former French colonies that neighbor it within the arid Sahel area simply south of the Sahara. But the president’s critics on Saturday accused him of finishing up a constitutional coup.
“This is a Louis Bonaparte 1851-style coup,” mentioned Ndongo Samba Sylla, an economist, referring to Napoleon’s nephew, an elected president of France who, when his time period expired, declared himself emperor.
The day earlier than Mr. Sall’s announcement, Mr. Sylla sat in a café on Dakar’s palm-lined coastal highway, the Corniche, expressing concern that Senegal’s leaders have been about to destroy its establishments.
Long lauded as a regional mannequin of democracy, Senegal’s electoral course of was in truth “a system to cheat,” Mr. Sylla mentioned, reflecting a dynamic mirrored throughout Francophone Africa: getting old presidents who’re unpopular with their youthful electorates, with fees frequently introduced in opposition to potential opponents.
“Senegal is not democratic, for me,” he mentioned. “Democracy is about political equality. We don’t have that.”
Like the nations now led by juntas, Senegal has skilled a wave of youth discontent, with widespread demonstrations in opposition to a authorities that many see as repressive, out of contact, in cahoots with France, and unable to create enough alternatives for younger individuals, who dominate the nation demographically.
These issues have led many younger Senegalese to show to a politician who portrayed himself as a savior from the nation’s elites, from France and from financial hardship: 49-year-old Ousmane Sonko.
Mr. Sonko, who’s in jail and barred from standing within the election, his celebration dissolved, has variously been charged with calling for rebellion, with defamation of the nation’s tourism minister and with rape. He was acquitted of rape, however convicted of “corrupting youth” for appearing immorally towards the younger therapeutic massage therapist who accused him of raping her.
His authorized battles have solely appeared to gasoline Mr. Sonko’s reputation, sending hundreds into the streets, bashing pots and pans all through the nation in his help and in defiance of the federal government.
At least 16 individuals have been killed within the demonstrations, in line with Human Rights Watch.
