The Constitutional Council of Senegal has cancelled the postponement of the presidential election in Senegal.
The council annulled President Macky Sall’s decree and a contentious bill passed by parliament moving the polls to December. Opposition members in the country’s parliament, who had been forced out of the legislative building while protesting the postponement, said that the bill amounted to an “institutional coup”.
It said that the law “derogating from the provisions of article 31 of the constitution, adopted under number 4/2024 by the National Assembly, in its session of February 5th, 2024, is declared contrary to the Constitution.
“Therefore, the decree number 2024-106 of February 3rd, 2024 repealing the decree summoning the electorate for the presidential election of February 25th, 2024 is cancelled.”
Many see this as a major boost for the independence of the country’s judicial body, and for its role as a check on the country’s legislative and executive excesses. Opposition candidates and lawmakers, who had filed a number of legal challenges to the bill, will likely feel vindicated by the court’s decision on Thursday evening.
While it recognised that it was “impossible” for the election to be held on the originally intended date of 25 February – just 10 days time, the council urged authorities to organise it “as soon as possible”.
This decision by the council raises some concerns, pundits say. On one hand, the government could still employ methods to stall the conduct of the elections. The Constitutional Council’s decision to allow the government fix a new date means that President Sall will organise the presidential election as soon as his administration says it is logistically ready for the task.
Its arguments, as already suggested by some political sources, would be that the presidential election would require colossal logistics and resources on material and human level and this would naturally still require an extension.
In addition to these hiccups, there is the dispute that could arise from many successful or rejected candidates. A possibility already confirmed by a candidate, Mouhamed Boun Abdallah Dione, who expressed his concern about going to elections with a Constitutional Council of which two of its members are accused of corruption.
The court also did not rule on the government’s decision to probe the process of selecting the candidates and this process may still go on.
Mr Sall had announced he was shifting the elections because of what he claimed were concerns over the process by which same Constitutional Court cleared some opposition candidates. His proposal had been backed by 105 out of the 165 MPs. A six-month postponement was innitialy proposed, but a last-minute amendment extended it to 10 months, or 15 December.
Critics of Macky Sall’s, and the legilature’s decision accused him of either trying to cling on to power or unfairly influencing whoever succeeds him. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that Khalifa Sall, a leading opponent and a former mayor of the capital Dakar, who is not related to the president, had called the delay a “constitutional coup” while Thierno Alassane Sall, another candidate, also no relation, called it “high treason”.
The court decision comes on the same day as several opposition politicians and civil society members were released from prison, in what some in the country viewed as a move to appease public opinion.
Senegal has had a change of government only four times since its independence in 1960 (Macky Sall’s government is the fourth)- the first two serving more than half of this period. The country has largely escaped the critics of West Africa’s political systems because it had remained relatively calm without much that could pass it off for the usual African experience.
The country emerged at independence with a stable government, the political leadership seemed secure under the continued protection of the French even as political demands were largely played down by the belief that a majority of the electorate supported the government.
Over the years, however, it seems that the same reasons, for which the country was adjudged a West African success story, may have inspired the public protests. Same allegations that trail Sall’s leadership had triggered massive protests against his predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade, which, Ironically, Macky Sall rode on to become president.
