Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko, detained since the end of July on various charges including calling for insurrection, “suspended” his hunger strike on Saturday, which began more than a month ago, but his participation in the 2024 presidential election remains compromised by a conviction in a sex scandal.
Mr. Sonko, whose balance of power with power and justice has kept Senegal in suspense for more than two years, announced that he had started his hunger strike on July 30, two days after his arrest followed by his indictment and his detention on August 1 in Sébikotane, near Dakar, where he was then transferred on August 6 to a hospital.
Presidential candidate in February 2024, Mr. Sonko, 49, third in the 2019 presidential election, accuses President Macky Sall, who denies it, of wanting to exclude him from the ballot by legal proceedings. Mr. Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, announced in early July that he would not stand for re-election.
“Ousmane Sonko has just suspended his hunger strike”, announced the communication manager of Mr. Sonko’s party, El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, in a message on his Facebook page and on X (ex-Twitter), also transmitted Saturday morning at AFP.
“I confirm the information,” Bamba Cissé, a lawyer and member of the Collective for the Defense of Mr. Sonko, told AFP.
Mr. Sonko “acceded to the request of the Caliph” General Serigne Mountakha Mbacké, the leader of the powerful Muslim brotherhood of the Mourides, a member of his entourage told AFP on Saturday. On August 22, the Caliph of the Mourides received in Touba (center) a delegation from the coalition to which Mr. Sonko belongs.
He had asked him to send the opponent a call for him to start eating again, a member of this delegation told AFP.
Several calls, in particular from very influential religious leaders in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country where they often lead political mediations, have been launched in recent days for Mr. Sonko to stop his hunger strike.
Another lawyer for Mr. Sonko, Ciré Clédor Ly, cited to AFP “two reasons” explaining his client’s decision.
“He could not remain insensitive to the call of millions of people who are relieved by this suspension”. In addition, “he has never had a suicidal tendency, he must not exhaust his vital organs. It was therefore indicated that he suspend” his hunger strike, said Me Ly to AFP .
Mr. Sonko’s lawyers had issued several alerts on the deterioration, according to them, of his state of health.
In a press release sent Friday evening to AFP, they affirmed that the life of their client, “admitted to intensive care” since August 17, was “in danger” and invited the State “to urgently take all necessary measures to avoid a drama”.
The Senegalese authorities had questioned this hunger strike.
Mr. Sonko was convicted on June 1 of underage debauchery and sentenced to two years in prison. Having refused to appear at the trial, which he denounced as a plot to exclude him from the presidential election, he was convicted in absentia.
He has since been imprisoned at the end of July on other charges, including calling for insurrection, criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise and undermining state security.
The authorities are questioning his responsibility in a series of episodes of protest to which his standoff with power and his disputes with the justice have given rise since 2021 – the most serious in June – and which have left several dead.
In an online interview published Wednesday by the magazine Jeune Afrique, the Minister of Justice Ismaïla Madior Fall affirmed that the condemnation of the opponent in the case of morals was “final”, which makes him ineligible for the presidential election of 2024.
Mr. Sonko was also sentenced on appeal to six months in prison suspended in May for defamation against a minister, a case in which he has not exhausted his appeals. Several hundred of his activists and sympathizers are in prison, according to his party.
02/09/2023 21:40:46 – Dakar (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
