PORTRAIT - Senegal: Macky Sall, a president in troubled times

Europe 1 with AFP 12:35 p.m., February 6, 2024, modified at 12:36 p.m., February 6, 2024

The Parliament of Senegal ratified in great confusion the bill aiming to postpone the presidential election until December 15, 2024, a vote which plunges the country into the unknown on Tuesday and raises fears of boiling over. In power since 2012, Senegalese President Macky Sall is accused of “authoritarian drift”.

He is proud of having transformed Senegal in twelve years of presidency through reforms and major works. Macky Sall's opponents see him as the author of the latest coup in Africa to maintain power. 

In power since 2012

“The Senegal of 2023 is incommensurable with the Senegal of 2012,” said Macky Sall, presenting wishes on December 31 to the 62-year-old with the air of a balance sheet. Elected in 2012, re-elected in 2019, for months he maintained uncertainty over a new candidacy in 2024. The no to a third term was one of the watchwords of the protest which bloodied the country at different times. repeated since 2021.

By decreeing in 2023 that he would stay there, even if he maintains that he had "the right to represent himself", he had brought relief. “On April 2, 2024, if it pleases God, I will transfer power to my successor,” he declared on December 31, looking ahead to the official end of his mandate. Since then, the still latent crisis has resurfaced.

The postponement of the presidential election, “a constitutional coup d’état”

Macky Sall announced on Saturday the postponement of the presidential election to December 15, 2024, in a country which considered respect for the electoral calendar as a sign of the inviolability of democratic practice, abused or destroyed by putsches and faits accomplis elsewhere in the region. .

The opponent Khalifa Sall (no relation) denounced "a constitutional coup d'état" which would conceal the intention of fulfilling a "dream of eternity", even if the president repeated his commitment not to run again.

Former traveling companion Abdou Latif Coulibaly said he did not understand it himself. “Perhaps it is simply that when we exercise power we believe that everything is possible,” he told French radio RFI after resigning from the government. He was among the many to recall the remarks made in 2012 by Macky Sall: the president "cannot extend his mandate, it is impossible", even for one day.

Severe face, imposing stature

The incomprehension is all the greater since Macky Sall was at the time one of those who fought in the name of the Constitution the candidacy of Abdoulaye Wade for a third term in an already troubled context. Macky Sall broke up in 2008 with the man who had been his mentor and whose minister and prime minister he was. He had united the opposition and defeated Mr. Wade in the second round.

In his autobiography 

Le Sénégal au coeur

, Macky Sall offers two translations of his last name: “stubborn” and “who refuses”. With a stern face and imposing stature but affable speech, he claims, through his mother, a lineage of warriors who “would rather die than lose face”. His last years at the head of the country were marked by the merciless confrontation between the government and the anti-system opponent Ousmane Sonko and the outbursts of violence to which it gave rise.

The geological engineer by training prefers to be remembered for his numerous projects in the service of development: new airport, new town of Diamniadio, industrial parks, regional express train and motorways, tripling of electrical capacities...

A person listened to

Abroad, Macky Sall was a listened interlocutor, in 2022-2023 as president of the African Union or within the West African organization ECOWAS. He was the champion of a reform of global political and financial governance. He spoke of an Africa which "has suffered enough of the burden of history", free of its choices, such as that of continuing to invest in hydrocarbons when it only produces 4% of polluting emissions, or of repressing homosexuality.

“There can be no legitimacy for some to define and impose on everyone a single way of living, like a civilizational ready-to-wear,” he proclaimed from the platform of the UN in 2023. He said he strongly condemned "any form of unconstitutional change of government", in the face of the succession of coups d'état in West Africa.

Accused of calling into question the principles he defended

With the postponement of the presidential election, Macky Sall finds himself accused of calling into question the principles he defended. The opposition denounces an authoritarian drift. She accuses the power of exploiting justice. Their legal troubles prevented Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade from competing against him in the 2019 presidential election. In 2024, Ousmane Sonko suffered the same fate.

Human Rights Watch recently wrote that, over the past three years, 37 people had been killed in unrest without "anyone having to answer for these acts", and hundreds of others arrested. Ousmane Sonko calls him a “dictator”. “If Senegal was a dictatorship, as some want us to believe, do you sincerely think that they could have spent a single day insulting me over and over?” Mr. Sall replied in November in the magazine Jeune Afrique. “Those who want anarchy and chaos to satisfy their ambitions will find me in their path.”