President Sall's announcement came a few hours before the start of the (French) election campaign.

Senegalese President Macky Sall announced today, Saturday, the postponement of the presidential elections, which were scheduled to be held on February 25, indefinitely.

The announcement came after the formation of a parliamentary committee to investigate two judges who are members of the Constitutional Council, whose integrity was questioned.

Sall said in an address to the nation that he signed a decree today canceling the decree of last November 26 that set the date of the presidential elections on February 25, and his announcement came a few hours before the start of the electoral campaign for the presidential vote.

Sall added, "I will launch an open national dialogue with the aim of creating conditions for holding free, transparent and inclusive elections."

This is the first time since 1963 that presidential elections by direct universal suffrage have been postponed in Senegal.

In July 2023, the Senegalese President, who was elected in 2012 for a 7-year term and re-elected in 2019 for a second 5-year term, announced that he would not run for a new term.

Draft resolution

Yesterday, Friday, the Senegalese Democratic Party said that it had submitted to Parliament a draft law requesting the postponement of the presidential elections, citing facts that it claimed harmed the transparency and integrity of the vote.

The Democratic Party spoke in a statement of its concerns about the decision-making process in the Constitutional Court, the exclusion of candidates, and other issues, which it said derailed the race.

Postponing the presidential elections would be unprecedented for Senegal, which has witnessed four largely peaceful transfers of power through ballot boxes since independence from France in 1960.

The Democratic Party, the party of former President Abdallah Wade, did not propose a new date for the elections.

The party's candidate, Karim Wade's son, was excluded from the electoral race, as the Constitutional Court ruled that Wade had dual citizenship when he submitted his candidacy application and was therefore ineligible.

Tensions have escalated in the past few weeks due to the Constitutional Council's decision to exclude prominent contenders such as Wade and the controversial young opposition figure, Ousmane Sonko, from running. They say the nomination rules were not applied fairly.

Source: Agencies