After several postponements and days of tension, the opponent Ousmane Sonko – who was not present at the hearing this Thursday, March 30 for his trial – was sentenced to two months in prison suspended for “defamation”, at the following a complaint lodged by the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang. A sentence that preserves his eligibility for the 2024 presidential election according to his lawyers.
If the maintenance of his eligibility is confirmed, the judgment seems likely to reduce, at least temporarily, the strong tensions that have been running through the country for weeks and which, again on Thursday, almost brought the capital Dakar to a standstill, squared by the police and the gendarmes.
A possible respite which could be short-lived, the fate of the main opponent of President Macky Sall remaining suspended on an appeal, from the prosecution for example, but also on another procedure in which he is implicated for alleged acts of rape, which he disputes.
Aged 48, Ousmane Sonko had to answer for defamation, insults and forgery against the Minister of Tourism Mame Mbaye Niang.
In addition to the two months in prison with the suspended sentence, the court sentenced Ousmane Sonko to pay 200 million CFA francs (300,000 euros) to the minister. He acquitted him of the offenses of insults and forgery.
The public prosecutor had demanded his sentence to two years in prison, including one year firm, for defamation and forgery, and three months firm for insults. He also requested that an arrest warrant be issued against him. “With a two-month suspended sentence, Sonko remains eligible,” two of his lawyers, Mes Bamba Cissé and Cheikh Khoureyssi Ba, told AFP.
Behind this defamation lawsuit, it is Ousmane Sonko’s declared presidential candidacy that is at stake. The texts in force provide for the removal from the electoral lists, and therefore ineligibility, in certain cases of conviction for defamation.
The opponent, who came third in the presidential election in 2019, as well as his supporters cry out for the instrumentalization of justice by the power, which would seek to eliminate him politically and clear the way for the outgoing Macky Sall. Ousmane Sonko has sworn not to let it go.
The court once again took on the air of an entrenched camp on Thursday and activity was once again sluggish in the capital, as has become the rule at each appointment of the opponent with justice.
Since 2021, his summons have sparked clashes with the police. At least 12 people were killed in 2021 during several days of riots, the most serious unrest known for several years in this country known as a rare island of stability in the region.
The hearing immediately gave rise to procedural incidents and heated exchanges between the parties, until Mr. Sonko’s lawyers left the courtroom. Mr. Sonko’s lawyers protested in vain against the refoulement, Wednesday by the Senegalese authorities at Dakar airport, of a new colleague recruited for the defense of the opponent, the Franco-Spanish Juan Branco.
Ousmane Sonko announced on social networks that another of his advisers, Me Ousseynou Fall, had been suspended by the Bar Association. “We blocked the defense, lawyers who were to come […] It is clear that Senegal is no longer a rule of law,” Cheikh Aliou Beye, a deputy from Mr. Sonko’s party, told reporters near the home of the latter, the surroundings locked by a large police force. It must be said that the personality of Mr. Sonko divides. His sovereignist, pan-Africanist and social discourse, his diatribes against the elites, corruption and the economic and political influence exercised according to him by the former French colonial power have earned him great popularity among young people. His detractors denounce him as a populist who does not hesitate to blow on social embers.
President Sall himself accused Ousmane Sonko of using the streets to escape justice, in an interview recently granted to the French magazine L’Express. Calls from the opposition to protest on Wednesday and Thursday seemed to have little effect. Hundreds of people have been arrested in recent weeks, including supporters of the opponent. The vagueness maintained by President Sall as to his intention to override constitutional objections and whether or not to seek a third term in 2024 is fueling tensions. The opposition has made no to the third term its watchword.
