Senegal democracy survives Sall’s scare

Senegal’s Constitutional Council on Thursday overruled outgoing President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone the elections to December 15 which were scheduled to be held on February 25. Sall announced that the election needs to be postponed because of members of the Constitutional Council being corrupt, and the parliament on February 5 passed a resolution setting a new date for the election.

The Constitutional Council in its order made it clear that neither the president nor the parliament have the right to decide on the presidential poll, and it is the Council alone that has the right to do so.  The president’s office issued the statement that Sall would abide by the decision of the Constitutional Council. This is the first time since Senegal became independent from France in 1960, that an election has been delayed. Senegal is considered the most successful democracy in Africa.

Sall’s actions include imprisoning political opponents and presidential hopefuls like Ousmane Sonko, who heads the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF), who was sent to prison and his party dissolved by the Supreme Court on charges of insurrection. Another opposition leader, Karim Wade of the Senegalese Democratic Party and son of Sall’s predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade. Sall, who had served two terms of the presidency, a seven-year and a five-year one, has extended support to incumbent Prime Minister Amadou Ba to be president.

According to observers, the reason Sall had resorted to the tactic of postponing election was that he feared Ba losing to Sonko’s stand-in presidential candidate, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who is considered a radical populist. The political atmosphere in the runup to the presidential election became oppressive with the government crackdown on the opposition, the media and civil society. South African CICUS Monitor said that Senegal had “experienced one of the largest declines in civic freedoms in 2023”, Amnesty International described the government’s actions as “a blatant assault on the right to freedom of expression and press rights.” There were protests against the postponement of the presidential election and the government used force to deal with the protestors.

With Sall’s assurance that he would abide by the Constitutional Council’s direction, it would appear that Senegal would go back to its democratic and constitutional ways after an aborted attempt to bring in authoritarianism. In many of the African countries in

the region, democracy has been fragile. Where elections are held, they are found to be unfair or rigged, and there are many cases where elected governments were overthrown through military coups. Democracy seemed to be a fragile form of government in many African countries, though this is a common story in many parts of the world.

What seems to prevent democracy from keeling over is the restraint of those in power and their commitment to democracy. It would be ironical to talk of Sall’s commitment to democracy if last year’s developments in Senegal are kept in mind. The fact that he has agreed to abide by the Constitutional Council’s decision raises the hope that democracy in Senegal has survived the Sall scare.

It can only be speculated that Sall’s decision to go ahead with the presidential election despite his attempt to defer it to a later date is the tradition of democracy that has established itself in Senegal for more 60 years now.  Senegal’s economy is doing well and shows prospects of continued growth, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Though the war in Ukraine has caused some shock, its oil and gas production have helped the economy to maintain a respectable growth rate, and it is expected to clock more than 5 per cent annual growth rate in the next few years.