The legislative elections organized on Sunday July 31 in Senegal are a sham. On paper, eight lists compete to renew the 165 seats of the National Assembly in a complex voting system with a single round. One hundred and twelve deputies are elected by a relative majority on departmental lists or representing the diaspora, the remaining 53 seats being filled proportionally on the basis of the total votes of the parties added up at the national level. The pre-campaign in June led to violent demonstrations, which left three people dead, after the Constitutional Council invalidated the national list of the main opposition coalition, Yewwi Askan Wi (YAW, “liberate the people” ), obliging him to present only his substitutes, unknown to the general public. Since then, calm has returned and everyone has campaigned without major proposals for voters and without real debates between the different parties.
Last ballot before the presidential election of February 2024, these legislative elections actually appear in everyone’s mind as a dress rehearsal for a duel that may never take place between a current president, Macky Sall, whom the Constitution pushes towards released after two consecutive terms, and his most virulent opponent, Ousmane Sonko, prosecuted after his indictment in March 2021 for “rape and death threats” against a massage parlor employee. Senegalese political life is now polarized around these two opposing personalities and the stakes of Sunday’s elections are simple: YAW and its new ally, Wallu Senegal (“Secourir Senegal”), the coalition formed around the former President Abdoulaye Wade, will they manage to snatch the majority of deputies from the movement in power, Benno Bokk Yaakaar (“United for the same hope”)? In such a case, the head of state, who maintains the greatest vagueness about his future, would see the path for a third term seriously hampered.
Muticity on his intentions – “Why should I answer right away when I have two years left?” I will respond when the time comes. (…) For now, I’m working.” he said in June in an interview with World, Macky Sall, however, reveals some harbingers of his temptation. “If the opposition wants to make these elections a referendum against Macky Sall, never mind, but it will have to draw the consequences on the evening of the 31st”, warns his special adviser, Hamidou Kasse, predicting “a reset of the clocks”.
“Logic of rupture” of the opposition
Mr. Kasse praises the presidential record, emphasizing in particular the realization of infrastructure and social programs: “We have gone from 30 to 350 kilometers of highway, the emergency community development program has enabled millions of rural people to access drinking water and electricity. We have done more in ten years than in the fifty years of independence that preceded it. » The entourage of the Head of State also insists on the fact that Senegal must join, in the last quarter of 2023, the club of hydrocarbon exporting countries and could therefore be “the object of destabilization attempts”. Of course, Macky Sall is a guarantee of stability at a time when Westerners are looking for new sources of energy supply.
For Paris, the equation is complex while the main interested party “does not reveal his game”, indicates an official French source. According to our information, France last year promised the current president of the African Union to support his candidacy for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations if he were to give up seeking a third term. . “Challenging democratic gains would be a heavy loss for Senegal with great potential for destabilization. We continue to speak to him about the future and the fact that moral consciences can lift the region up.specifies the same source, at least as worried about “the logic of rupture” advocated by the opposition, of which France appears to be the obvious victim.
With less caution, an influential African diplomat posted in Dakar sums up the feeling now widely shared by most chancelleries: “Especially not Sonko! », he relates while, according to him, “Macky Sall has long been in the logic of a third term, without having all the cards in hand”.
Political, economic and social malaise
Indeed, if, since the arrival of Macky Sall in power, justice has eliminated two of his opponents, Karim Wade, the son of his predecessor, then Khalifa Sall, the former mayor of Dakar, respectively condemned for acts of ‘illicit enrichment’ and” fraud involving public funds”, if the president was also able to bring back Idrissa Seck, his main challenger in 2019, like many political figures in the country, he is now faced with a much more radical rival and facing to a youth that is not satisfied with kilometers of tar and tons of cement dumped.
“Ousmane Sonko is a great revealer of the political, economic, social and psychological malaise experienced by Senegalese, especially young people, the marginalized, for whom he expresses a need for revaluation of Africans”, analyzes Alioune Tine, from the Afrikajom Center think tank. For this old hand in the defense of human rights and discreet mediations, who was at the forefront a decade earlier in the fight against Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to hand over power to his son, if Macky Sall were to compete in 2024, the country will inevitably catch fire, the Senegalese remaining jealously attached to their democratic achievements and the possibility of alternation in power.
By the vacuum operated by Macky Sall, who promised in 2015 “to reduce the opposition to its simplest expression”, Ousmane Sonko has in fact become the only vehicle for frustration and the last resort of a heterogeneous opposition in a hurry to regain power. West Africa’s democratic showcase is today damaged both by the hegemonic practices of power and by the populism of its opponents.
Disillusioned, the philosopher Hady Ba proves quite incapable of predicting the future. His only certainty: “There will be a lot of demonstrations and deaths if Macky Sall tries the adventure. » And to conclude that “Senegal’s main problem today is the weakening of the judiciary. If we had functioning justice, the question of a third term for the president contrary to the Constitution or the candidacy of an opponent accused of rape would not arise.