The situation was still very tense in Senegal on Monday February 5, two days after the indefinite postponement of the presidential election by President Macky Sall. After clashes on Sunday evening in the capital, a protest rally in front of the National Assembly was dispersed by the police using tear gas.
MPs are due to debate on Monday a proposed constitutional law which would postpone the vote for up to six months, during a session anticipated as a crucial moment. Approval requires a three-fifths majority of the 165 deputies. It is not acquired. The vote is scheduled for today. Adoption or rejection, the situation will remain highly volatile.
Access to mobile Internet data was cut at least in several districts of Dakar on Monday, journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted. The government had already suspended access in June 2023, in a context of political crisis. Elsewhere, the measure has become a common means of response to stem mobilization and communication via social networks.
African Union calls for “dialogue”
The President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, called, Monday in a press release, the Senegalese to resolve their “political dispute through consultation, understanding and dialogue”, after the tensions and violence caused by the postponement of the presidential election. Expressing his “concern” about the postponement of the presidential election, he asked the authorities to “organize the elections as soon as possible, in transparency, peace and national harmony”.
The Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the United States, the European Union, France, important partners of Senegal, have asked to work towards a new election date.
Mr. Sall announced on Saturday, a few hours before the opening of the electoral campaign, that he had signed a decree postponing the presidential election, which was to take place on February 25. The announcement raised an outcry and raised fears of an attack of fever in a country known to be an island of stability in West Africa, but which has gone through various episodes of deadly unrest since 2021. This is the first time since 1963 that a presidential election by direct universal suffrage is postponed in Senegal, a country which has never experienced a coup d’état, a rarity on the continent.
The opposition denounces an authoritarian drift in power. With the postponement of the presidential election, she suspects a plan to avoid the inevitable defeat according to them of the presidential camp, or even to prolong the Macky Sall presidency, despite the commitment reiterated on Saturday by the latter not to run again. The candidate of the presidential camp, Prime Minister Amadou Bâ, is contested within his own ranks and faces dissidents.
President Sall invoked the serious conflict which broke out between the Constitutional Council and the National Assembly after the final validation by the court of twenty candidacies and the elimination of several dozen others. He alleged the risk of pre- and post-election protests and new clashes as in 2021 and 2023.
