Highlights: Senegal: multiple reactions following the postponement of the presidential election to December 15, 2024. After the evacuation by the gendarmes of the opposition deputies from the hemicycle, the National Assembly adopted on February 5 the bill to postpone the election. The bill also provides that the country's president Macky Sall remains in office until until his successor is elected. A contested vote even though it took place in a tense climate and ultimately in the absence of opposition deputies, after long hours of resistance.

After the evacuation by the gendarmes of opposition deputies from the hemicycle, the National Assembly adopted on February 5 the bill to postpone the presidential election until December 15, 2024 and…

Senegal: multiple reactions following the postponement of the presidential election to December 15, 2024

After the evacuation by the gendarmes of the opposition deputies from the hemicycle, the National Assembly adopted on February 5 the bill to postpone the presidential election until December 15, 2024 and to leave the outgoing president in power until the entry into office of a new head of state. Reactions are multiplying the day after this contested vote. Details.

[Illustrative image] A main transit road in Dakar, February 6, 2024 AFP - JOHN WESSELS

By: RFI Follow

With our correspondent in Dakar,

Léa-Lisa Westerhoff

Senegal

, the new date of the presidential election was voted on the evening of February 5 in Parliament: it will be December 15, 2024. The bill also provides that the country's president Macky Sall remains in office until until his successor is elected. A contested vote even though it took place in a tense climate and ultimately in the absence of opposition deputies, after long hours of resistance.

For more than six hours, opposition deputies marched to the Parliament desk to ask preliminary questions and try to postpone the examination of this law, which they believe is full of slag. A failure.

Read alsoSenegal: the Assembly votes to postpone the presidential election after the forced evacuation of opposition deputies

So, when around 8 p.m., the President of the National Assembly proposed to vote on the law without addressing the substantive debates, the fifty opposition parliamentarians stood up as one and blocked the hemicycle. Unable to continue. The president refuses to open a debate. After an hour, the opposition parliamentarians sang the national anthem and were finally evacuated by the police. They therefore did not attend the vote on the law which was done without them, adopted almost unanimously: 105 votes in favor of pardoning the deputies of Karim Wade's Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and the ruling coalition. Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) and only 1 vote against. “

A report with forceps

” headlines the daily

L’Enquête

this Tuesday morning.

Opposition MP and presidential candidate Thierno Alassane Sall protests.

It's a terrible shock. Today, in a session with almost no debate, the Constitution has just been modified to extend the mandate of the President of the Republic by one year, while article 103 of the Constitution says that the provisions concerning the mandate cannot be revised. And what is more serious is that it opens an extremely difficult period for Senegal because, from April 2, everything is possible. The country is not going to remain stable. The President of the Republic is mistaken if he believes that he will be able to manage countries that are bleeding to death through repression. This is not possible and we fear the worst, because the red line that our efforts which made it possible to restore hope through a democratic alternation, this red line was clear.

00:45

Thierno Alassane Sall, of the Republic of Values, opposition presidential candidate

Léa-Lisa Westerhoff

A “

disappointing spectacle

”, reacts opposition candidate Aly Ngouille Ndiaye. “

A law passed by forceps

”, in his words after an “

illegal

” decree. He decided to attack the decree which interrupts the electoral process before the Supreme Court of Senegal today and plans to attack the law which sets the date of the elections and extends the mandate of Macky Sall before the Constitutional Council.

First of all, it is an appeal against the decree because it is the decree which is at the origin of all this, the decree which repeals the decree which summoned the electoral body. Unfortunately, this decree was not yet available. The president said in his speech on Saturday that he had made a decree, it was this decree that we only saw yesterday, which is why we did not appeal. Now that the decree is available, we are going to appeal today, we are going to appeal against the decree, because the president does not have the right, neither constitutional nor legal, to stop the electoral process by a decree. The Senegalese Constitution is clear in its terms. We consider that currently, this is a situation of lawlessness, which we will attack through normal channels: the Supreme Court for the decree for excess of power and also the Constitutional Council on the constitutionality of the law which has just been passed. be voted to postpone the elections, because in our Constitution, it is not provided for to modify the mandate of the President of the Republic. Virtually all opponents have attacked the decree and all opponents will attack the law.

00:58

Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, opposition candidate

Amélie Tulet

Opposition deputies who plan to seize the Constitutional Council from February 7, the time to recover the bill.

On the other hand, it is a completely different point of view from the side of the ruling coalition. For Abdou Mbow, deputy of the BBY coalition, there is no violation of the Constitution but rather a temporary exemption.

The majority of deputies decided to organize the elections on December 15, that is to say, to make a temporal rearrangement, I say circumstantial, of article 31, because article 27 which speaks of the duration of the mandate of the President of the Republic was not affected. Article 103 paragraph 7 which talks about our revisions and our extensions of the mandate of the president has not been touched, which means that the exemption from article 31 is a temporal sequence which will disappear the next day of the presidential election of December 15, 2024, because we also wanted to stay within the electoral year so that people understand that it is a matter of time to organize a transparent, free, democratic and inclusive election.

00:46

Abdou Mbow, president of the parliamentary group of the ruling coalition

Léa-Lisa Westerhoff

This morning, Dakar woke up with a new date for the presidential election. The capital has been calm since Tuesday morning, with mobile Internet still cut off and streets generally cordoned off by police. On all strategic axes, police trucks are visible. Many schools are closed and bus traffic reduced. Many already seem resigned.

But the protest is being organized, particularly on the side of civil society: the Senegalese are invited to wear a red armband as a sign of protest and to use horns, whistles and pots from this evening and tomorrow between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. since it is not possible to demonstrate.

A call for a general strike is also launched for Thursday 8. In a press release, the Coalition of Senegalese Trade Union Confederations is concerned about an unprecedented political crisis and this postponement which "

undermines the foundations of democracy

" and calls for the holding of a presidential election.

The teaching unions, too, condemn and warn against the consequences of this postponement with the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar still closed...

Finally, the opposition candidates were to meet this morning to talk about what comes next: appeals to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Council and the organization of the mobilization.

In Senegal, civil society is mobilizing to oppose the postponement of the presidential election and the fact that President Macky Sall remains in power until the vote announced for December 15.

The singer Youssou N'Dour, for example, indicated "

to oppose the postponement of the election

": "

Our democratic meetings are binding on all of us and the sovereign people will be the final judge.

A column was also broadcast. It directly targets the head of state.

“Restoring the republic” is the title of this text published by academics from across Senegal and the diaspora, including renowned jurists. Based on the texts of rights, constitution and laws, the signatories believe that Macky Sall has put in place “

a plan to liquidate democracy

”, that his decision to stop the electoral process “

literally violates several constitutional provisions

” , that the Constitution precisely provides for ways of resolution which cannot accommodate “

the despotic attitude of President Macky Sall

”. The jurists who signed this forum thus believe that the president has notably trampled on articles 27 and 103 of the Constitution which prohibit the president from serving more than two mandates and from modifying the duration of these mandates. These academics add: “

It is unacceptable to want, for the benefit of a man, a party, a group of courtiers from another era, to compromise the future of a nation.

» In the conclusion of its column, this collective calls on “

the Senegalese to stand up against this transgression, to have the law restored by the Constitutional Council and to restore the Republic.

Senegal: multiple reactions following the postponement of the presidential election to December 15, 2024

Senegal: multiple reactions following the postponement of the presidential election to December 15, 2024

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