Clashes broke out on Sunday afternoon in Dakar where the Senegalese gendarmes dispersed with tear gas hundreds of people who came to demonstrate against the postponement of the presidential election announced the day before by the head of state Macky Sall, noted a journalist of the AFP.
Men and women of all ages, waving Senegal flags or wearing the jersey of the national football team, converged at the beginning of the afternoon towards a roundabout on one of the main roads of the capital, to the call of several candidates.
Presidential candidate says he was “brutalized”
The gendarmes, deployed in large numbers, unleashed heavy fire with tear gas grenades to try to disperse them.
Then they plunged on foot or in pickup trucks into adjacent neighborhoods in pursuit of fleeing demonstrators, who in places threw stones at them.
Young people chanting “Macky Sall dictator!”
» undertook to set up roadblocks with makeshift means.
One of the presidential candidates, Daouda Ndiaye, posted a message on social networks in which he claims to have been “brutalized” by the police, and reports that some of his collaborators were “arrested”.
I was attacked, brutalized and my vehicles stopped.
My men are arrested by the gendarmes just now at Place Saint Lazare.
The elections will take place this February 25, 2024.
Sunday February 4, 2024.
Professor Daouda Ndiaye pic.twitter.com/trQ8p6sq8c
— Patrie🇸🇳 (@laPatrie221) February 4, 2024
The postponement of the presidential election sparked an outcry and raised fears of an attack of fever in a country renowned as an island of stability in West Africa, but which has experienced various episodes of deadly unrest since 2021. A demonstration is also planned Monday in front of the National Assembly to say “no to a constitutional coup,” according to a message circulating on the social network X.