International Courant
On July 4, tens of millions throughout Senegal breathed a sigh of aid when President Macky Sall introduced in a nationwide speech that he wouldn’t be operating for a 3rd time period.
A constitutional referendum in 2016 barred presidents from serving greater than two five-year phrases, however Sall, who had been elected 4 years earlier, had lengthy maintained his eligibility for an additional time period. The brand new legislation, he argued, successfully set the clock again on its time period limits.
His prolonged refusal to say whether or not to take part within the February 2024 polls, and authorized quagmires that trapped a few of his political opponents in contentious circumstances, helped gasoline lethal protests all through his presidency.
However whereas Sall’s announcement brings aid to pro-democracy activists and residents throughout the West African nation, it additionally throws February’s election large open.
“Macky Sall’s choice to not run is unprecedented,” mentioned Babacar Ndiaye, a political analyst and analysis director on the Dakar-based West Africa Assume Tank (WATHI). “The outgoing president, Macky Sall, will host the election and won’t be a candidate. And in Senegal we by no means had that. We now have all the time had elections the place the incumbent president ran for an additional mandate.”
The race to 2024
Already within the operating is Idrissa Seck, the runner-up within the 2019 presidential election, and whose Rewmi get together had joined Sall’s ruling Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY) coalition after final yr’s parliamentary election. Additionally lively is Aminata Touré, who was beforehand Prime Minister of Sall. However whereas each candidates served in authorities with Sall, they’ve left to pursue their presidential aspirations.
Seck has portrayed his candidacy as being primarily based on “extra jobs and revenue, extra meals and meals safety, in addition to honest entry to fundamental providers” — the sort of points the nation’s subsequent president will face, no matter who wins in 2024.
Regardless of Senegal displaying stable financial progress lately, analysts and voters advised Al Jazeera {that a} lack of jobs for the nation’s burgeoning youth inhabitants will stay a prime – and tough – precedence for the subsequent administration.
For his half, the president advised the media that he delayed his announcement to keep away from turning into a “crippled duck”. He additionally mentioned that if some “menace” had referred to as into query the nation’s stability, it may need been smart for him to flee once more.
However analysts speculate that the truth that he doesn’t but have a chosen successor may lead Sall to think about one other run.
And there’s a regional precedent for this pessimism.
Alassane Ouattara, President of Ivory Coast, additionally vowed to not search a 3rd time period in workplace in 2020 – solely to take action after the dying of his get together’s candidate, Amadou Gon Coulibaly. Senegalese opposition politician Birame Souleye Diop was charged in courtroom this week for suggesting that Sall would possibly poison his would-be political successor after which conduct himself “Ouattara type”.
This near the Senegalese election, it’s unlikely there will likely be any extra main defections from BBY, mentioned Maurice Soudieck Dione, an affiliate professor of political science on the Université Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis.
“By not operating for an additional mandate, President Sall will put the Benno Bokk Yaakaar coalition in a extra politically snug place,” Dione mentioned. With no time to interrupt between a number of presidential bids, BBY is extra prone to unite round a single candidate.
Present prime minister Amadou Ba and the chairman of the Financial, Social and Environmental Council Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo, amongst others, are mentioned to be attainable BBY contenders.
Ex-President Abdoulaye Wade’s son, Karim, and former mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, had been each convicted below Sall’s tenure — actions which have been disputed by their supporters as being politically motivated. However they’re additionally prone to leap into the fray, as a strategy of “nationwide dialogue” is anticipated to revive their health to run for president, Ndiaye mentioned.
The Sonko candidacy
The destiny of Ousmane Sonko hangs over the election – the fiery opposition chief who has tapped into disenchantment with Senegal’s political elite to achieve an enormous following among the many nation’s youth, typically unemployed or underemployed themselves.
His June conviction for “corruption of youth” was lighter than anticipated – he had initially been charged with rape, in a trial that sparked mass protests and a authorities crackdown, with supporters saying the case was fabricated to sideline him politically. to make. He completed in third place in 2019, however his eligibility to compete within the 2024 race stays unsure.
Observers and voters fear {that a} race that excludes Sonko will spark extra protests.
“Macky Sall kept away from a 3rd run due to inside and exterior strain,” together with protests, mentioned Samba Thiongane, a Sonko supporter in Dakar. “Had he run for workplace, it will have been the tip of the republic.
“The issue with the presidential election is that if the election is not inclusive, the subsequent president may have much more issues than Macky Sall as a result of he will not be professional,” Thiongane added. “There’s a very tangible threat of issues going mistaken earlier than or after the election.”
Nonetheless, some really feel that with Sall out of the race, a number of the anger that stuffed the protests surrounding Sonko’s trial and sentencing may dissipate.
“The president has achieved loads,” together with constructing roads and highways and elevating the salaries of presidency staff, mentioned Nuru Sow, a nurse in Kaolack and BBY supporter.
“Even many Senegalese who opposed Macky Sall imagine that they’ll vote for the (candidate) who chooses Macky Sall” to succeed him, Sow mentioned. “They weren’t in opposition to Macky Sall — they had been in opposition to the third mandate.”
From ‘flawed democracy’ to ‘hybrid regime’
Sall’s resignation after two phrases in workplace is, on the one hand, a affirmation of Senegal’s established democratic consolidation: Senegal’s first two presidents, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdou Diouf, every served 20 years. As opposition events gained extra freedom below Diouf and after his defeat on the poll field in 2000, the roots of democracy started to take maintain.
These roots have since been repeatedly stress examined. Diouf’s successor, Abdoulaye Wade, additionally ran for a 3rd time period in 2012. He was defeated by Sall, an irony that Sall’s detractors liked to level out, amid his years of reluctance to commit to 2 phrases. (Wade had used the identical controversial accounting as Sall, arguing that constitutional revisions had reset his time period limits.)
In Sall’s 12 years in workplace, Senegal dropped from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ within the Washington-based NGO’s world democracy rating Freedom Home. Throughout the identical interval, Senegal sank from a “flawed democracy” to a “hybrid regime,” in keeping with the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2022 Democracy Index.
And but these shortcomings, just like the deaths of protesters killed by safety forces or the imprisonment of journalists and opposition politicians below his tenure, may very well be rapidly forgotten by a world neighborhood comfortable to see him resolve to step down. The US has already mentioned that he’s a “instancefor the area, typically described as a “coup belt.” In an interview with the French each day Le mondeSall even appeared to trace that he is likely to be a great match for the United Nations.
Because it stands, Sall is the primary Senegalese president to voluntarily restrict himself to 2 phrases in workplace. Given the lots of protesters who demanded him, he most likely will not be the final.
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