Opponent Ousmane Sonko, sentenced a month to two years ago in prison, called on the Senegalese to “come out massively” in the coming days, on the eve of a speech by President Macky Sall who must say whether he will be a candidate to a third presidential term in February 2024. “We have to come out to confront the regime of Macky Sall and say that it will not be up to him to choose the candidates who will have to compete for the next presidential election”, he said. -he declared Sunday evening July 2 during an intervention on social networks.
The conviction of the opponent in a sex scandal, which makes him currently ineligible, sparked the most serious unrest in Senegal in early June, killing 16 according to the authorities, 24 according to Amnesty International and 30 according to the opposition. Mr. Sonko has continued to cry out for the plot of power to exclude him from the presidential election of February 2024, which the power refutes. He has been blocked by the security forces at his home in Dakar, “sequestered” according to him, since May 28.
President Macky Sall’s announcement, scheduled for 8 p.m. (local and GMT) on Monday, July 3, is eagerly awaited in Senegal. The vagueness he maintained about his intentions in relation to the presidential election contributed to creating an explosive climate. Mr. Sall was elected in 2012, re-elected in 2019. He had the Constitution revised in 2016. It stipulates that “no one may serve more than two consecutive terms”. His supporters present him as their candidate in 2024, arguing that the revision has reset the counters to zero.
According to the opponent, if the president does not show up, it will be to better eliminate him politically and relaunch the judicial machine and “this is not acceptable”. If arrested and if he is not released within two hours, “I call on all Senegalese people to stand up as one man and come out in droves and this time to put an end to this criminal regime “, he specifies.
A “free and sovereign” choice
If the president shows up, “I believe it’s incumbent on all the Senegalese people to stand up, to face him,” he said. “If there’s going to be a fight, it has to be final. I call for a national leap forward. The days and weeks ahead will be crucial” and “difficult”, he added. He also called on the Senegalese to mobilize to demand the release of political detainees and to put an end to his “administrative detention” as soon as possible.
For the opponent, the consultation at the initiative of President Sall, which ended ten days ago, is nothing but a “deal” between the different political forces that participated for the eliminated from the presidential race.
This “national dialogue” brought back to life two opponents, Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall, whose political trajectory had been brutally interrupted by legal troubles and who had been deprived of the 2019 presidential election. The case of Mr. Sonko, sentenced on June 1 to two years in prison, was not addressed by the consultation.
At the end of the work, President Macky Sall had promised to speak about his possible candidacy for the presidency of 2024 after the Muslim festival of Tabaski, which took place on Thursday, and which emptied the capital of a part of its inhabitants. He had previously argued that only political and not constitutional factors would prevent him from running, and asserted that his choice would be “free and sovereign”.
On Saturday, in front of local elected officials who had petitioned to support him, he called on his political family to unite and to place “the general interest” and “the interest of the coalition” before any other consideration. “My fight and my greatest pride are really to lead you to victory and to pursue our economic policy for the benefit of our people,” he said, stressing that the roadmap to make Senegal an emerging country in 2035 was already “tagged”.