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A deputy who tears off another’s wig in the middle of an exchange of blows; Barthélémy Dias, mayor of Dakar and candidate for the perch, who brutally seizes the microphone of a speaker in a concert of insults; Guy Marius Sagna, another opponent known for his outbursts, who tries to seize the ballot box receiving the votes for the election of the President of the National Assembly, before being grabbed by a squadron of gendarmerie deployed within the hemicycle itself… The return to parliament in Senegal, Monday, September 12, most likely set the tone for the next eighteen months awaiting Macky Sall and his government.
During his first ten years of presidency, the Head of State had been able to lead without major pressure, with an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly (124 of the 165 seats in the previous one), made up for the most part of all those who have gradually rallied him since his election in 2012. The legislative elections of July 31 deprived him of this ease and if the opposition did not manage to impose the cohabitation it hoped for, the opening day of this new legislature has hinted at the minefield looming before it.
The executive will no longer have the same leeway to vote on its bills or lift the immunity of an opponent
In order to obtain an absolute majority and elect its candidate to the perch, Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY), the presidential movement, which now has only 82 deputies, was able to count on the support of an independent deputy, Pape Diop , and on the divisions of the inter-coalition of the opposition, Yewwi Askan Wi/Wallu Senegal, which presented three candidates to finally boycott the vote. However, it now seems obvious that the executive will no longer have the same leeway to vote on its bills, lift the immunity of an opponent – as was the case for the former mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall. in 2017 and for Ousmane Sonko, the rising figure of the opposition, in 2021 – or avoid parliamentary investigations.
“There is a real risk of paralysis”
“The chaos of this return to school was predictable after the tensions observed during the last elections. The first challenge for power is now to distance the opposition from the orders of the Assembly, because there is a real risk of paralysis until the end of Macky Sall’s mandate, while the vote on organic laws requires a majority three-fifths”indicates a foreign observer on the spot.
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