Had Senegal gone to the polls on 25 February 2024, as the West African country had earlier scheduled until President Macky Sall’s indefinite suspension of the national elections, Africa would have been welcoming a new president from that country by now.
Sall, on 4 February 2024, postponed the presidential election. In a televised address, Sall cited a dispute over the list of candidates as his reason for the radical decision. In that address, he told the whole world that he had signed a decree that effectively abolished a November 2023 measure that had set the original election date. “I will initiate an open national dialogue to bring together the conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election in a peaceful and reconciled Senegal,” Sall said, and failed to give a new date for the election to be held. In Sall’s view, the decision by the Constitutional Council, a month earlier, to exclude some prominent opposition members from the list of candidates, was part of the “troubled conditions” that “could seriously undermine the credibility of the ballot by sowing the seeds of pre- and post-electoral disputes.”
The petition for a postponement came from the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), whose candidate, Karim Wade, son of the country’s former leader Abdoulaye Wade, was among those excluded from running in the election. While the delay may be good news for the PDS, it has been greeted with suspicion by another opposition party, PASTEF. “We feel this is a constitutional coup,” Yassine Fall, Pastef’s vice president told Al Jazeera. “Macky Sall is not doing this for us, he is doing this against us,” she said. “Macky Sall understands that if we go to elections, we will win by a landslide victory. But he wants to stay in power or have someone from his party to be elected. This is why he plays these kinds of games to come and manipulate the institutions illegally”. “We are right now at a very dangerous setback in our democracy because Macky Sall is taking responsibilities that are not his own.”
Apart from PDS’s Karim Wade, who is in exile in Qatar, and was not allowed to take part in the race because of accusations that he had dual French-Senegalese citizenship, another candidate, Rose Wardini, who is also accused of the same dual-citizenship offence, is currently in detention. Pastef’s popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko as well as his stand-in for this election, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, are also in jail.
Disturbances and condemnation of postponement
The postponement sparked protests in parliament and on the streets. Three Senegalese opposition lawmakers from the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition were arrested after protesting parliament’s endorsement of a 10-month delay by fixing 15 December 2024 for the poll. One of them had tried to physically stop a parliamentary vote on the matter by blocking the dais. Also, a former police captain was detained. “Senegal has definitively sunk into dictatorship,” the coalition’s spokesperson was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Outside Senegal, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) demanded the re-establishment of the electoral calendar. “The ECOWAS Commission encourages the political class to urgently take the necessary measures to re-establish the electoral calendar in accordance with the provisions of the constitution,” the regional bloc said. Also, the U.S. Department of State expressed deep concern with the postponement of the election, saying the move ran “contrary to Senegal’s strong democratic tradition.” “The postponement of Senegal’s presidential election puts the country on a dangerous path towards dictatorship, and must not be allowed to stand,” said U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin in a statement. However, lawmakers of the governing coalition held a press conference to defend Sall’s postponement of the election. “We did what we needed to do and we will take responsibility for it,” said Cheikh Seck, one of the MPs who spoke to journalists.
Sall’s democratic credentials
In July 2023, Sall, who was first elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2019, announced he won’t be running for a third term in 2024, despite being goaded by his supporters to defy the West African country’s Constitution. He had promised in 2019 that he would serve his second and final term. Senegal’s Constitution has a two-consecutive-term presidential limit. Sall’s sanctioning and conviction of some members of his party, who had earlier opposed his candidature, was seen as a harbinger of his desire to go the Abdoulaye Wade way – attempt a third term – but his July announcement put that speculation to bed. One other reason that made Sall’s announcement surprising was that despite the two-consecutive-term limit of the Constitution, he had argued that he had the legal right to stand again once a review of that law had happened. In his view, such a revision would have reset his two terms to zero, starting from 2019. “I never wanted to be held hostage to this permanent injunction to speak before the hour,” Sall said in his national address where he made the announcement, explaining and justifying his decision: “I have a code of honour and a sense of historical responsibility which command me to preserve my dignity and my word”.
Sall’s Political Career
Sixty-three-year-old Sall, a geologist, was born on December 11, 1961, in Fatick, Senegal. Before becoming president, he served as the country’s prime minister from 2004 to 2007 under President Abdoulaye Wade. Coming from a modest family of five children, Sall studied geological engineering and geophysics at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar where he graduated in 1988. He also went to the French Institute of Petroleum outside Paris. In 2000, he became a special adviser on energy and mines. He later became minister of mines, energy, and water in 2001. In 2002, he became mayor of his hometown, Fatick, in addition to a stint as the one in charge of infrastructure and transportation. He later became a minister of state that year. Subsequently, he became minister for the interior and local government in 2003. The following year, Sall was appointed deputy secretary-general of Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (Parti Démocratique Sénégalais; PDS). He also became Wade’s fourth prime minister after the dismissal of his predecessor, Idrissa Seck.
Sall resigned from that position in 2007. He subsequently got elected as president of the National Assembly, as part of the Sopi Coalition, which won Wade the presidency in the 2000 presidential election. However, his audacity to summon his mentor’s son, Karim Wade, the President of the National Agency of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), for an audit hearing in the National Assembly regarding construction sites in Dakar for the OIC Summit planned to take place there in March 2008 brought him to prominence. This move, interpreted by some analysts as a move by Sall to thwart the possibility of Karim becoming his father’s successor, earned him disaffection within the PDS. Infuriated by Sall’s daring action, leaders of the party voted to abolish his position as the second-most-powerful man within the party.
Also, and rather coincidentally, the National Assembly voted to cut from five years to just a year, the term of the Assembly’s presidency, in an obvious move to oust Sall. Still, a stubborn Sall wouldn’t budge until the Assembly passed a resolution to remove him. After clearly seeing the signs on the wall, Sall, who had been Wade’s protégé all these years, resigned from his mentor’s PDS to form his party, the Alliance for the Republic—Hope (Alliance pour la République—Yaakaar; APR—Yaakaar), along with some 30 ex-officials of Wade’s PDS. In 2009, he got re-elected as Fatick’s mayor on his new party’s ticket. Sall would quickly capitalise on his former mentor’s dwindling popularity and political fortunes, to have a shot at the presidency.
Amidst intense disillusionment by Senegalese over the rising cost of living, poor infrastructure, development dearth, and Wade’s quest for a third time seven-year term, Sall’s popularity soared, giving him a shot in the arm in the first round against Wade in February 2012. He trailed his former mentor-turned-arch rival’s 35 per cent with 27 per cent of the votes cast. Realising that Sall was within an arm’s length from the presidency, other opposition candidates threw their weight behind him in a concerted alliance aimed at constitutionally ousting Wade and thwarting his attempt at unconstitutionally staying in power beyond the two-consecutive-term limit. The opposition support increased Sall’s popularity, helping him to trounce Wade in the March run-off. His victory was a landslide, winning 66 per cent of the votes cast to Wade’s 34 per cent.
Sall’s Presidency
After his inauguration into office as the fourth president of Senegal on 2 April 2012, Sall wasted no time at all in cutting down the presidential cabinet to save the nation some much-needed funds. He scrapped some ministerial privileges and abolished 59 commissions and directorates he saw as unnecessary. Some of those state institutions included the National Agency of Senegal’s New Harbours; The Directorate of Small Aircraft Construction; The National Agency of the Desert High Authority; The Senegalese Office for Industrial Property and Technology Innovation, which overlapped with the Senegalese Agency for Industrial Property and Technology Innovation. He also had Wade’s management of the country audited. As part of his quest to fight corruption, Sall brought back life into the Court for the Repression of Illicit Enrichment while creating a National Anti-Corruption Office as well as a National Commission for Property Restitution and Recovery of Ill-Acquired Gains. Sall’s government also announced a price reduction on oil, rice, and sugar, as part of measures to reduce the cost of living for ordinary citizens while raising pension payments.
Also, peasants received emergency subsidies. Sall also set about to give life to one of his key campaign promises, which was to cut the term of a president from seven years to five years; and also limit a president to two terms. He submitted his proposals to the Constitutional Council in January 2016. The Council, however, rejected Sall’s quest to cut short his presidential term, but the other proposals, including the presidential term reduction that was to take effect after he left office, were allowed to be put to a referendum, which was held in March. More than 60 per cent voted in favour of the changes. One of his key projects is the ambitious construction of Diamniadio – a well-planned city that is intended to ease the activity burden on the overcrowded national capital Dakar, as part of his ‘Emerging Senegal’ ambition to transform the country. In 2019, Sall won a second term with 58 per cent of the vote in the presidential election held on February 24.
Is it a veiled and opportunistic constitutional coup through the backdoor by Sall to overstay his welcome?
Even though Sall had announced months earlier that he was not going to contravene the Senegal’s Constitution and run for a third term, his suspension of the February 25 vote – an unprecedented move in his country – has sparked angst and suspicion. Already, Sall’s late and begrudging announcement that he would not go for a third term, set the nation on tenterhooks. Therefore, his decision to delay the poll, sort of reinforces the suspicion his critics had of him. Is he just taking advantage of a situation that doesn’t need his intervention, to perpetuate himself in power for, at least, one extra-constitutional year without seeming to have contravened the Constitution by infracting the two-term limit? For a region where most leaders find it difficult to leave office after their term of office ends, Sall’s move, no matter how altruistic he may want the world to believe it is, rather appears to have a selfish ulterior motive – to stay in power beyond his constitutional mandate. That sends a wrong signal to other leaders in the region. For a region that has been plagued by eight coups in the past three years, Sall’s decision portends ill consequences which could mar the country’s democratic credentials. It risks birthing revolutionaries and/or coupists, who may want to exploit the people’s anger to subvert democracy. It risks breeding chaos in Senegal and the region. Sall must know that there is no perfect democracy in the world and that he cannot and will not be the first ‘messiah’ to redeem his country’s democratic faults, no matter how crooked they may be. A faulty democracy is better than a constitutional coup. A faulty democracy is more tolerable than a back-door coup. A faulty democracy is better than another example of an African leader seeking to use any means necessary to entrench his stay in power. A faulty democracy must be left to cure itself. It certainly doesn’t need help from usurpers and pretenders. It is such a shame that Sall has sullied his legacy with this unfathomable political move which will haunt him for the rest of his public life. Now, it appears more that Senegal needs saving from Sall than any injustice, unfairness or political mischief he intends to cure.
