Senegal: the ECOWAS Court of Justice orders the end of the electoral sponsorship system
Local elections on March 22, 2009 in a Dakar polling station: this voter shows her hands free of ink marks to be able to vote.
AFP / Georges Gobet
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
This system requires candidates for the various elections to collect sponsorship from 1% of the electorate in order to stand.
During the 2019 presidential election, only five personalities were able to cross this threshold and present themselves.
This law was contested by opposition parties including the USL, the Liberal Social Union, which seized the sub-regional jurisdiction in December 2019.
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With our correspondent in Dakar
,
Théa Ollivier
The decision of
the ECOWAS Court of Justice
is clear: the Senegalese Electoral Code violates the right to free participation in elections.
For this reason, the institution ordered the State of Senegal to "
remove all obstacles
", as well as to remove "
the electoral sponsorship system
" within six months.
This decision is a satisfaction for Abdoulaye Tine, lawyer and member of the Social Liberal Union party which had seized the Court of Justice of the ECOWAS in December 2019. “
It is a victory over the law where the manifest illegality of this law is finally recognized,
”he said.
According to the lawyer, this law does not meet the guarantees of legal certainty.
And this decision shows that President Macky Sall was not
"
duly elected in 2019
" and
"
that he must draw the legal consequences.
"
While the local elections must be held before the end of January 2022, Cheikh Bamba Dieye, an unregistered deputy, is awaiting a reaction from the government.
He hopes that this court decision will be accepted and therefore that the sponsorship law will be repealed.
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