Senegal is inflamed after President Macky Sall's announcement to postpone the elections, scheduled for February 25, without providing a new date. Clashes and arrests were recorded in various cities with deaths and injuries. Senegal is the only West African country to have never suffered a coup. Since 1981, Senegal has been a parliamentary democracy, which has experienced three changes of government with regular elections. The risk now is that the army could take power, taking advantage of the Chaos institutional.
By Massimiliano D'Elia
The president of Senegal Macky Sall, very close to France, tried to reassure his seventeen million compatriots by saying that the vote could not be held until the problems that threatened the credibility of the vote were resolved. Last year Sall reiterated his solemn commitment not to run again for the third time, thus respecting the constitutional provisions.
Senegal is, therefore, facing the worst constitutional crisis of its more than six decades of independence. The opponent of the current president, Ousmane Sonko, widely followed by young people, last year ended up in prison for reasons that are still unclear. Sonko's policies, according to the government majority, include the exit from the economic dictatorship of the CFA franc (a currency supported and controlled by the French Treasury and still used by eight West African countries).
The population had greeted the arrest with great distrust, but without becoming very animated as they waited to be able to vote on February 25th. With the announcement of the cancellation of the election, the spark ignited the protest, causing tens of thousands of people to take to the streets.
The reaction of the executive was immediate, deploying the police in riot gear on the street and interrupting the internet and a local television station critical of the current government.
The deputies, in an attempt to quell the protests, hastened to pass a resolution to reschedule the presidential vote for next December. A postponement of the electoral date which, according to international observers, hides a precise strategy of President Sall.
In Senegal we are not witnessing a rise of military power in an anti-French sense as in Burkina Faso, Mali e Niger or to an Islamist insurrection. It is about something deeper that comes from within the institutions, what the opposition defines as a "constitutional coup“, the one implemented by the able President Sall who does not disdain totalitarian methods, such as mass summary arrests.
At least three MPs, all allies of the opposition leader, have been arrested and around two thousand Sonko supporters are already in prison after last year's protests, in which at least 16 people were killed.
Sonko, 49, was barred from the presidential election after being jailed for defamation. Previously he had been tried for alleged sexual assault, a charge that was dropped due to the weakness of the evidence brought to trial, which was clearly found to be artificially fabricated. Yet, even though Sonko had been neutralized, President Sall feared that Sonko's designated replacement could easily win over his seemingly weaker candidate, such a Tinder Ba. It is suspected that Sall, in fact, intends to use the time until next December to find another much stronger candidate and a catalyst for votes.
The favorite could be Karim Wade, with French citizenship, former minister and son of a former president of Senegal. Wade had been excluded from the race in the current presidential elections because national law does not provide for a candidate with dual citizenship and the bureaucratic time needed to renounce the French one is too long, considering the date of February 25th. Now, with the postponement to December, Wade will be able to complete the procedures to renounce his French citizenship even if in the meantime, according to the FT, the anti-French opposition leader Sonko will be released from prison because his sentence for defamation has expired. Therefore, another game will open, hopefully in a "democratic" sense, as long as something more disruptive happens first given that, by constitution, on April 2nd, President Sall will formally lose his legal powers.
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