“I signed decree 2024-106 on February 3, 2024, repealing decree 2023-2283 of November 29, 2023, convening the electoral body,” announced Macky Sall on Saturday, February 3 at 2pm, in a speech broadcast live on national television.
While the word “postponement” was not used, the presidential election – set for February 25, 2024 by said decree signed in 2023 – will indeed be pushed back to a later date, which was not disclosed.
“My solemn commitment not to run in the presidential election remains unchanged,” specified Macky Sall, who had announced last July that he did not want to seek a third term.
“I will initiate an open national dialogue in order to bring together the conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election,” he added. The head of state chose to speak on the very day of the start of the election campaign, which was supposed to begin Saturday at midnight for all presidential candidates.
Rumors of a postponement of the vote had been growing in Senegal since the publication of the list of candidates by the Constitutional Council on January 20. Opponents Ousmane Sonko and Karim Wade had been eliminated – the former for his six-month prison sentence for defamation, the latter for not having renounced his French nationality in time.
Towards a six-month postponement? On Saturday morning, the office of the National Assembly, convened urgently, validated a bill from the parliamentary group of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) to postpone the presidential election.
“Our parliamentary group Democracy, Freedom and Change has just filed a bill with the National Assembly to postpone the presidential election scheduled for February 25,” Karim Wade said on February 2. “This bill will repair the harm suffered by more than 40 candidates eliminated from the presidential election.”
For the PDS, the postponement was “imperative”: it was necessary to “ensure that all the gray areas surrounding the electoral process will be dissipated.”
It was an initiative motivated “by the many incidents and disputes […] highlighting serious malfunctions in the management of sponsorships and the electoral roll, and even more so with the arbitrary elimination of candidates,” its parliamentary group said.
On Wednesday, January 31, the deputies of the majority had already passed a resolution in the National Assembly for the creation of a parliamentary inquiry commission, responsible for shedding light on the whole process. Karim Wade and his party accuse two members of the Constitutional Council, the magistrates Cheikh Tidiane Coulibaly and Cheikh Ndiaye, of corruption. They also suspect the Prime Minister, Amadou Ba, of “collusion” with the Council.
“These troubled conditions could seriously undermine the credibility of the election by sowing the seeds of pre- and post-electoral litigation,” Macky Sall said on Saturday to justify the postponement. “While it still bears the scars of the violent demonstrations of March 2021 and June 2023, our country cannot afford a new crisis.”
Amadou Ba had been met by the head of state on February 2. That same evening, the candidate of the presidential coalition announced “the start of the campaign” and his desire to see “elections held in peace and transparency.”
“The elections will be held on February 25,” a member of his team still wanted to believe on Friday. The same day, the Minister of Community Development, Thérèse Faye Sall, a loyalist of the head of state, spoke out publicly to advocate for a postponement of the elections “for six months”, due to a risk of “unrest”.
The opposition mobilised Several candidates expressed their disagreement with postponing the election. The former mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, thus stated his “categorical opposition to any attempt to postpone”.
“The non-respect of the republican calendar would open the way to unprecedented political instability, plunging Senegal into a period of uncertainty with disastrous consequences,” he warned. “There is no institutional crisis in the country, no interruption in the regular functioning of institutions that could justify such a postponement,” he added.
“We firmly reject any idea of postponing the elections, which has no legal basis,” added candidate Thierno Alassane Sall, who had filed the appeal against Karim Wade before the Constitutional Council, citing “unfounded and senseless” forcing of the PDS candidate.
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