The legislative elections of July 30, 2017 were the most chaotic of all the elections in Senegal’s long electoral history. The services of the Ministry of the Interior, then headed by a certain Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo, were overwhelmed by the scale of the task. Indeed, 47 lists were in competition. However, it can be said that the organizers of the election had all the latitude to prepare the legislative elections of 2017, in a certain serenity, in accordance with the regular conditions provided for by the electoral law. Better still, the election, which had initially been set for July 2, 2017, was postponed to July 30, 2017. Indeed, following a consultation with the political class, President Macky Sall issued a decree on January 18, 2017, to set the new date, in order to avoid an election campaign during the Ramadan period. This gave the government more than seven months to organize the said elections.

The fatal catastrophe of the November 17, 2024

The endorsement system was decided upon as a necessary filter for national elections following lessons learnt from the 2017 election. As a result, only eight lists were able to compete for the following legislative elections, on July 31, 2022. It must be said that the fate of the early legislative elections of November 17 is already written, they will be catastrophic, and for good reason!

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The endorsement system has been abolished and we are already seeing the proliferation of candidate lists. Who does not remember that in the 2024 presidential election, this same system prevented more than 200 candidates? We have already seen the announcement of hundreds of candidates lists for the upcoming legislative elections. Under what conditions will the vote take place? What will the skills and competencies of the new government and administrative authorities be to stand out from the crowd? They are, for the most part, novices in the material organization of a national election. The new Minister of the Interior, General Jean Baptiste Tine, will not be able to count on experienced collaborators; they all find themselves having to organize the first election of their career. In addition, they will be seriously lacking in time to satisfy the necessary due diligence. For the preparations for this election, the deadlines are compressed in a very short period of two months. In addition, Senegal does not have the necessary logistics to manufacture hundreds of millions of electoral printed materials needed to satisfy hundreds of competing lists. At least seven million ballots would have to be printed for each list. All the printers in the area, even those requisitioned by the State, are hardly equipped to carry out such work, in an impossible time, there are also no stocks of paper on the market.

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Should we urgently order printing paper and other electoral materials and/or was certain work carried out abroad? Under what conditions? And, if so, there would be no guarantee of delivery on-time. Once again, in 2017, printed and other electoral materials were delivered just in time and not even in sufficient quantities! It is therefore necessary to engage in consultations with political stakeholders, if the government wishes to hold the election under acceptable conditions. Perhaps also the tight deadlines for submitting candidacies will prevent as many lists as one wants!

The government seeks to provoke an opposition boycott of the vote 

It must be said that the government is working to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the opposition to participate in the election. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko concealed all information on all the preparatory acts for the election, while it has just been revealed that they were working on holding the election since July 10, 2024, the date on which the Constitutional Council, on the request of the President of the Republic, gave them an opinion on holding early elections. This opinion was, until last week, hidden from the general public.

This approach, which consecrates what the Wal Fadjri newspaper called « insider trading » in its edition of Saturday, September 21, 2024, lacks fair play and denotes an absence of scruples. The political camp in power has taken a good lead over its potential competitors. President Faye also required other actors to draw up lists of candidates within ten days; while everything suggests that the Pastef party in power has already taken the lead to secretly carry out its investitures and prepare the administrative files of its potential candidates. A rush by opposition candidates to seek administrative documents in the registry and civil status services is taking place under inadequate conditions. The opposition political parties were in total ignorance and these tight deadlines do not leave them time to discuss electoral alliances. Everything is therefore organized to the disadvantage of the opposition actors or to their detriment. There is then a clear breach of the equality of candidates and this situation should be questioned by the electoral judge, the Constitutional Council.

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More seriously, many opposition politicians are subjected to harassment, ostracism, acts of intimidation and public threats, even summons and arrests, with the obvious aim of preventing them from devoting themselves to preparing their participation in the election. In any case, this approach, which could not be more disloyal, was announced and publicly assumed by government officials, Ousmane Sonko first and foremost. Will the opposition, grouped together in the framework of the Alliance for the Transparency of Legislative Elections (Atel), set up as a matter of urgency, give in to these provocations and resolve to refuse to participate in the election?  This would be a fatal mistake. Ousmane Sonko, who is increasingly apprehensive about the outcome of these legislative elections, will be very happy to see the opposition boycott elections. He will have no qualms about holding them, with a few stooges, and winning a comfortable majority that he will have difficulty obtaining, in the event of effective participation of appropriately mobilized opposition lists. The unpopularity of President Faye and his Prime Minister is perceptible. They are caught up by their difficult management of power.  The government’s incompetence and the controversial and irresponsible statements are causing a rather premature disenchantment, after only six months of the Diomaye-Sonko tandem in power. Sanction votes are also feared in Pastef’s camp and the Diomaye-President coalition has finally fallen apart. There is a real risk that their regime will suffer an electoral setback and that they will find themselves forced to live a form of « cohabitation with the opposition ». The prospect worries them greatly and it risks constituting a serious threat for the legislative elections of November 17, 2024. Will they resolve to cancel the vote to spare themselves a defeat? It is a truism to say that Ousmane Sonko is quite capable of this. The door will be wide open to chaos.

The dictatorship is arriving, fast 

There are good reasons to fear for the future of this country and its democratic system. Ousmane Sonko is an autocrat at heart and does not tolerate contradiction or opposition. To the great detriment of the country’s stability, he has drawn President Bassirou Diomaye Faye into a spiral of political violence, through rhetoric and acts of manipulation of institutions. The concern to protect the personal comfort of Ousmane Sonko, who refused to meet the constitutional requirement to make a General Policy Statement before the National Assembly, has caused an unprecedented institutional upheaval. This is how the quarrels he inopportunely started with opposition MPs resulted in reprisals that dislocated public institutions. The Prime Minister pushed the Head of State to trample on his dignity as President of the Republic. Bassirou Diomaye Faye admitted, in a message to the Nation on September 12, 2024, visibly recorded in a situation of psychological constraint, to having deliberately misled the National Assembly. He deceived the National Assembly by making it believe that the Prime Minister would make his General Policy Statement on September 13, 2024.  Since a crime is never perfect, Ousseynou Ly, President Faye’s Communications Advisor, revealed that the address to the Nation was recorded days before. We already suspected it! My God, has the Head of State taken the measure of such an act for his image and his honour? Ousmane Sonko truly obtained what he wanted, namely the scalp of the National Assembly, that of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) and that of the High Council of Local Authorities (HCCT). However, what could it have cost Bassirou Diomaye Faye and the respectability of the presidential institution? It must be said, the act he dared to do is not audacity or political cunningness, it is forfeiture, a desacralization of the signature of the President of the Republic.

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The final stride of the cavalcade was therefore this fraudulent dissolution of the National Assembly, in a crucial context for the implementation of due diligence essential to the smooth running of the State. The government does not care about not having corrected the 2024 budget by a Rectifying Finance Act or that it lightly takes the bet of going to the year 2025 without a budget, adopted in the regular forms. The consequences will be dramatic for the public finances and the economy of the country. (See our column of September 9, 2024).  It will remain that the height of the disasters that await Senegal will be, if the legislative elections fail to be held on the scheduled date, for one reason or another. Senegal will then live without a National Assembly and without any institution, other than the government. No control of government action will be ensured and, in these conditions, the President of the Republic will happily authorize himself to take regulatory acts for questions falling within the domain of the law. He has already started doing so, since the dissolution of the National Assembly.  He set, by decree, the deadlines for submitting lists of candidates when such a formality falls within the legislative domain. He set aside the Electoral Code. It will be said that when his predecessor Macky Sall ventured to set by decree legislative issues, the Constitutional Council did not fail to reject his copy. Certainly, there are good reasons to believe that President Faye, who reduces himself to a simple role of liegeman of Prime Minister Sonko, will not hesitate to « legislate », for example, restrict public freedoms and take « ukazes« , according to the mood and whims of his Prime Minister. Perhaps he will even go so far as to take an act to transfer presidential powers to him.

Let us be careful, this is not just a figment of the imagination! From now on, no indecency is too much in Senegal. There are citizens, in the absence of criminal prosecution and proper notification, who have been prevented from traveling, coming and going, because the Prime Minister has decided so! It should be noted that even legal proceedings against other citizens are announced in advance by Pastef political leaders, without any regard for the judicial institution and the rules and principles of the independence of magistrates! The country is already experiencing a deep democratic decline because it has never remained without a parliament and political actors have always managed to establish consensus for the preservation of institutions and the democratic process. Diomaye and Sonko, like all autocrats, have no respect for their opposition.

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn 

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE