After months of suspense, Senegalese President Macky Sall announced Monday that he will not be a candidate for a third term for the presidency of 2024, describing the political climate which had become explosive in the country.

This decision, in a region marked by repeated coups d’etat, somewhat restores the recently damaged reputation of Senegalese democracy, while opponents of Macky Sall had for months attributed to him the intention of presenting himself to a third mandate, illegal in their eyes.

“My dear compatriots, my long and carefully considered decision is not to be a candidate for the next election of February 25, 2024,” he said during an address to the nation broadcast on public television RTS.

After having been a leader of the movement against the candidacy for a third term of his predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade, in power from 2000 to 2012, and having repeatedly maintained that he would only serve two terms, President Sall had for several years refused months to dispel the doubt on its intentions and had not placed any dolphin on the front of the stage.

“Senegal is beyond me and it is full of leaders capable of pushing the country towards emergence,” he said.

“There has been so much speculation, commented on my candidacy for this election (…) My priorities focused above all on the management of a country, of a coherent government team, and committed to action for emergence, especially in a difficult and uncertain socio-economic context,” he added.

“I have a clear conscience and memory of what I have said, written and repeated, here and elsewhere, that is to say that the term of 2019 was my second and last term,” he said. underline. “I have a code of honor and a sense of historical responsibility that commands me to preserve my dignity and my word.”

He strongly condemned the violence that followed the two-year prison sentence of his main opponent, Ousmane Sonko, in a sex scandal. It makes it in the current state ineligible.

In early June, it caused the most serious unrest in years in Senegal, killing 16 according to the authorities, 24 according to Amnesty International and around 30 according to the opposition.

“The disastrous objective of the instigators, perpetrators and accomplices of this unprecedented violence was clear: to sow terror, to bring our country to a halt and to destabilize it. It is a real organized crime against the Senegalese nation, against the State, against the Republic and its institutions,” said President Sall in his speech.

Mr. Sonko, who enjoys great popularity with young people, has for his part constantly shouted at the conspiracy of power – which refutes him – to exclude him from the presidential election of February 2024. He is blocked by the security forces at his home in Dakar, “sequestered” according to him, since May 28.

In a video Sunday evening on social networks, the opponent called on the Senegalese to demonstrate “massively” the next few days, whether Macky Sall shows up or not.

According to the opponent, if the president does not show up, it would be to better eliminate him. In case of arrest and if he is not released within two hours, “I call on all the Senegalese people to stand up as one man and to come out massively and this time to put an end to this criminal regime. “, he said.

“If we have to fight a fight, it must be definitive. I call for a national leap forward. The days and weeks to come will be crucial” and “difficult”, he added.

Saturday, in front of local elected officials who had made a petition to support him, Mr. Sall 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 is really to lead you to victory and to pursue our economic policy for the benefit of our populations”, he declared, stressing that the roadmap to make Senegal an emerging country in 2035 was already “tagged”.

Monday morning, the first rain of the year fell on Dakar. After the long weekend of the Muslim Tabaski festival, its inhabitants quietly returned to work.

“I expect him to say I thank the people for the trust they have placed in me during these 12 years, I have contributed my stone to the construction of a harmonious Senegal and I will not represent myself “, said Samba Fall, 50, presciently. Otherwise, “it will shake the country”. Macky Sall proved him right.

07/03/2023 23:49:53 –         Dakar (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP