An unprecedented decision.
Senegalese President Macky Sall announced on Saturday the indefinite postponement of the February 25 presidential election.
A choice which plunges the country, considered an island of stability in Africa, into a new political crisis, after episodes of unrest in 2021 and 2023.
Why did Macky Sall postpone the election?
While the campaign for the presidential election was due to launch on February 4, with twenty contenders, President Macky Sall, who is not a candidate for re-election, decided to repeal the decree setting the vote for February 25, 2024. “I will initiate an open national dialogue, in order to create the conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election,” he added.
According to the Head of State, several political affairs, including an ongoing conflict between the National Assembly and the Senegalese Constitutional Council, "could seriously harm the credibility of the election by planting the seeds of pre- and post-electoral litigation."
“While it still bears the scars of the violent demonstrations of March 2021 and June 2023, our country cannot afford a new crisis,” the president also justified.
This decision is "astounding", while "the game of this presidential election seemed rather open", comments Caroline Roussy, research director at Iris and specialist in West Africa.
"We expected something new, especially in a context where a certain number of neighboring countries are giving in to coups d'état", according to the expert, who does not hesitate to speak of the cancellation of the vote, due to lack of new date.
What are the affairs that the Senegalese president denounces?
This conflict between the National Assembly and the Constitutional Council arose from controversies around the validation, or invalidation, of certain presidential candidacies, and the organization of the vote.
One of the files concerns in particular the candidate Karim Wade, son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade.
After his ouster from the presidential race due to his dual Franco-Senegalese nationality, elected officials from his camp, the Senegalese Democratic Party, denounced “corruption” on the part of judges of the Constitutional Council, which proclaims the results of the election, and rules on possible disputes.
A parliamentary commission of inquiry has even been launched into this matter.
A few days before the opening of the campaign, information disseminated on social networks affirmed that another candidate, Rose Wardini, also had dual nationality, and had still been qualified for the presidential race.
She was taken into custody on Friday.
These cases follow another conflict which shook the country: that around the opponent Ousmane Sonko, prevented from competing in the presidential election, indicted and imprisoned in 2023 for calling for insurrection, criminal association linked to a terrorist enterprise and endangering state security.
His party, Pastef, was dissolved, but Bassirou Diomaye Faye, a candidate from the same movement, also imprisoned, was kept in the race.
What do opponents say about this postponement?
As of Saturday, Senegalese opponent Khalifa Sall, one of the main presidential candidates, called on the entire country to “stand up” against the postponement of the vote.
Many opponents are calling for the presidential campaign to continue, and therefore to override Macky Sall's decree.
Candidate Ali Ngouille NDiaye, member of a coalition running for the election, plans to “seize the Constitutional Court tomorrow to declare the invalidity” of the decree postponing the vote, also indicates specialist Caroline Roussy.
Other political figures have also contested this electoral postponement, such as former Prime Minister Aminata Touré, who denounced on social networks an “unprecedented democratic regression”.
At the same time, the Minister Secretary General of the Senegalese government, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, announced his resignation to regain, he said, his “full and complete freedom”.
The man, a former renowned journalist in Senegal, is also the brother of one of the judges suspected of corruption.
How does the population react?
This Sunday, at the call of the opposition, hundreds of people gathered in the streets of Dakar.
“We came out to say no to this crime, no to this constitutional coup,” one of the demonstrators, Demba Ba, 36, told AFP.
The first clashes broke out in the middle of the afternoon in the Senegalese capital, where the gendarmes dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas.
“It seems that there is a kind of consensus on the part of the population” around maintaining the election at the end of February, estimates researcher Caroline Roussy.
The Senegalese “are keen on this democratic alternation and certainly do not want to be robbed.
(…) We will never be able to prevent young people who left in March 2021, in June 2023, from going out to express their discontent,” she adds.
And the international community?
The Economic Community of West African States expressed "its concern over the circumstances which led to the postponement of the election and calls on the competent authorities to promote the procedures in order to set a new date", while requesting for the political class to “give priority to dialogue”.
France, the United States and the European Union, for their part, called on the Senegalese authorities to hold elections “as soon as possible”, saying they were worried or “concerned”.
The EU calls on “all stakeholders to work, in a peaceful climate, to hold a transparent, inclusive and credible election, as soon as possible and in compliance with the rule of law, in order to preserve the long tradition of stability and democracy in Senegal,” declared EU spokesperson Nabila Massrali.