Democracy is under attack in Senegal
“Macky Sall, Dictator!” chanted protesters on February 5th in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, as they dodged police officers firing tear gas and raged at their president. By late that evening it was getting harder to disagree. Riot police in masks and helmets marched into the National Assembly and dragged out about 30 opposition MPs. “It’s a coup d’état against the people,” shouted one MP before he was pulled away. They had been occupying the speaker’s platform in protest against a planned vote, held without any debate, to delay by almost ten months the presidential election scheduled for February 25th. Moments later the vote passed. Mr Sall will now stay in office far beyond his term, which was supposed to end on April 2nd.
Senegal has been seen as an African star: a pillar of stability, democracy and economic growth in west Africa. Unlike many other countries in the region, it has avoided civil wars and coups, and has had a series of largely peaceful and democratic transitions of power. Never before has it delayed a presidential election. And in a region hit by a spate of coups, Mr Sall has played a leading role in the attempts by ECOWAS, the regional bloc, to push juntas back towards democracy. Yet his message has been undermined by a sharp decline in freedom in Senegal itself. Now its democracy is in grave danger.
The vote followed a speech by Mr Sall on February 3rd in which he had simply called off the election and proposed a “national dialogue” to create the “conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election”. Yet Mr Sall held such talks just months ago.
Since then repression has ramped up alarmingly. One presidential candidate was arrested while protesting the next day. Several MPs who had opposed the delay attempted to campaign regardless. They too were arrested. Mobile-internet access was cut for 48 hours, motorbikes (popular with protesters) were banned, and a television station was shut down altogether.
The constitutional crisis was triggered by accusations of alleged corruption in the Constitutional Council, the judicial body that determines whether candidates are eligible to run. Mr Sall justified postponing the election by saying time was needed to resolve the row between the council and some members of the assembly, which had already voted to open an inquiry.
In January the council barred Ousmane Sonko, the leading opposition candidate, on the basis of his conviction for defamation in a case brought by a minister. In jail on separate charges of fomenting insurrection, Mr Sonko says the cases against him are politically motivated. The council also blocked Karim Wade, the son of a former president, from running. Mr Wade’s political party, which made the allegations of corruption against the council, has pushed for the inquiry and the delay. The council denies any wrongdoing.
What is Mr Sall up to? He claims to be defending democracy, warning that the dispute between judges and MPs “could seriously harm the credibility of the election”. Yet he is unconvincing as a democratic saviour—and not just because delaying an election and marching riot police into parliament is a curious way of defending democracy.
His government was first accused of politicising the justice system in 2019, when Mr Wade and another opposition figure were disqualified from running for president because of legal troubles. Mr Sall’s administration has also previously ignored the law, seemingly to keep Mr Sonko out of the race. (Mr Sall denies any wrongdoing.) Worse, since early 2021 at least 45 people have been killed in various protests backing Mr Sonko.
Given all this, many fear Mr Sall, who had backed his prime minister, Amadou Ba, for president, has malign motives. One view is that he now believes Mr Ba will lose to Mr Sonko’s number two, who is running despite also being in jail—hence Mr Sall is delaying the election, perhaps to back another horse for the presidency.
Another is that he wants to cling to power for himself, either by delaying the poll again, or by going back on his word not to run for a third term. This would seem to be in breach of the constitution’s two-term limit, but Mr Sall maintains that he can run legally. The president had previously flirted with standing again before belatedly ruling it out. But he can be fickle—he postponed the election just days after pledging to stick to the original timetable.
Since the chaos in the National Assembly there have not been any large protests, perhaps because the police are out in force and up to 1,000 opposition members and activists have been arrested. Yet the fight is not over. There is talk of a general strike, influential religious bodies have denounced Mr Sall’s move, and the opposition is hatching plans for protests it hopes the police will find harder to stop.
The American government says that the vote to delay “cannot be considered legitimate”. Several candidates are challenging it at the Constitutional Council. They ought to have a strong case, since the constitution says that the duration of the president’s mandate cannot be amended. But since the council has been accused of impropriety, a ruling in either direction is unlikely to resolve the crisis.
“We are in a situation of total uncertainty,” says Alioune Tine, a human-rights activist in Senegal. “This jump into the unknown can have unexpected consequences—like the army taking power.” ■