Senegal’s Sall promises to leave office on April 2; still silent on election date.

President Macky Sall says national dialogue will decide the new presidential election date.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall has said he will leave office when his term comes to an end on 2 April, but questions remain over when the country’s presidential election will be held.

Sall, in a televised interview, said an election date would now be decided in a proposed national dialogue that he said would start on Monday.

Most of the opposition parties- Sixteen of the 19 presidential hopefuls, and a number of civil society organisations have refused to take part in the proposed dialogue, setting the stage for further political turmoil.

There has been immense pressure on Sall to announce a new date for the presidential elections since Senegal’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, declared last week that the postponement of the poll was illegal. Many feared the postponement would give Sall an excuse to remain in power beyond his constitutionally approved term.

Even more worrying was the decision by the Council to allow the government to set a new date for the elections, which many felt was an endorsement of President Sall to arbitrarily pick a date.

Speaking on national television on Thursday, February 22, President Sall said he felt there was not enough time to vote in a new president by the time he steps down on 2 April. He said that the dialogue forum would decide what should happen if this was the case.

In a show of good faith, the president said he was prepared to release the popular opposition politician, Ousmane Sonko, from prison, a gesture many believe would not go far enough to calm tensions as Sonko did not make the list of presidential candidates for the presidential race.

Several of the president’s opponents have already been set free since the Constitutional Council ruled that his decision to postpone the election was illegal, sparking accusations that their arrests were intentionally carried out to stifle the opposition.

Many believe that Sall’s announcement of his certain exit in April is just another ploy to stall while he plots his next move. They say the fact that the president did not set a new election date raises questions.