The parliamentarians have just adopted, at the end of last week, by a large majority, reforms of the Electoral Code which singularly allow two Senegalese citizens, Khalifa Ababacar Sall and Karim Wade, to return to the electoral political game, it is to be able to stand as a candidate in national elections. These two political personalities were criminally convicted thus making them lose their rights to be an elector and to be eligible. The voted law, once promulgated in the regular form, will be of immediate application but does not leave fewer people perplexed, doubtful or sceptical in front of this situation which reveals a real manoeuvre or manipulation of the rules. and principles of a constitutional, democratic state.  Indeed, the general and impersonal scope of this rule of law poses a problem. Nobody needs to be told that this law was tailor-made to allow Khalifa Ababacar Sall and Karim Wade to run for the next presidential election in 2024; hence the fact that it results from an arrangement between political actors.

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The case is the result of a consensus or a request expressed at the end of the Political Dialogue to which President Macky Sall had invited. Once again, no one was mistaken that this was essentially the purpose of the Political Dialogue. Was President Sall so keen to relieve his good conscience or to absolve himself of a political fault that had enabled him to exclude from the elections these opponents presented as formidable? 

The adage says that it is never too late to do the right thing, but the enthusiasm and diligence shown by President Sall and his government to bring about these reforms of the Electoral Code may be questionable. We cannot fail to note that President Macky Sall waited until he was no longer a candidate before agreeing to bring two major political adversaries back into the electoral game, because it must be said that there had been political dialogue sessions in 2019 and 2021 which requested these same arrangements to which President Sall continued to systematically refuse.  Macky Sall announced, on July 3, 2023, not to run for a new term as President of the Republic in 2024. We could thus understand the moods of political figures from his camp and potential candidates for the next presidential election who question the relevance of putting them in front of the tough candidates the president he himself, comfortably, and carefully avoided confronting. Would this explain why the law did not get a lot of votes from the MPs of Benno Bokk Yaakaar during its examination?

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On another register, we will hear voices raised about people condemned definitively for prevarication of public resources putting themselves in front of their fellow citizens to ask them to entrust them with the supreme office of President of the Republic! What progress in good governance practices and public accountability? It will now appear absurd to raise or sanction, in any way, a civil servant or other public official guilty of embezzlement involving public funds, as soon as one is elevated to the dignity of Head of State. a person recognized by Justice as guilty of the same facts.  Would magistrates think of saving themselves from ridicule and therefore henceforth avoid condemning political figures for indelicacy in the management of public funds?

This means that the precedent can be dangerous and any embezzler of public funds would be well advised to seek to run for the presidency of the republic or to form a political party to guarantee complete impunity. The fact remains that we can issue a small caveat about the situation of Karim Wade who, we can never say it enough, was badly judged by the Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment (CREI), which hardly met the standards of a fair and equitable trial (See in particular our columns of October 26, 2015 in which we advocated the reform of the CREI and that of June 27, 2016 entitled: “A thousand reasons to pardon Karim”).

The serious risk of an ungovernable country in 2024

We will continue to deplore that the political class is always more concerned with the dates of elections and the conditions for participating in them rather than the fate of the populations or even less with the proper functioning of state institutions. As proof of this, before the referral to the National Assembly of the bill reforming the Electoral Code, in the sense indicated above, a draft reform of the Constitution had been referred to the MPs with a view to adapting the electoral calendar by means of a shortening of the deadlines given to the President of the Republic to be able to dissolve the National Assembly. Head on, the political class castigated the draft reform of Article 87 of the Constitution which prohibits any dissolution of the National Assembly, before a period of two years after the installation of the latter. In less esoteric terms, the new President of the Republic who will be elected and installed on April 2, 2024, in the current state of the legislation, will have to wait until September 2024 to be able to dissolve the National Assembly and organize new legislative elections. 

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The consequence of this situation is that the new President of the Republic will not be able, when he takes office, to count on a parliamentary majority that he will be able to control and on which to rely to conduct the policy or the program for which he will have been elected. The handicap will be valid for whatever side this new President of the Republic comes from. We already know the configuration of representation in the National Assembly with forces that neutralize each other. A President elected in 2024 from the ranks of the majority of Benno Bokk Yaakaar (Bby) will see this majority shattered because everything suggests that the diversity of political poles and the fierce fights within this coalition itself towards the next presidential will not fail to leave traces or wounds that are difficult to heal. Anyway, the Bby MPs can be considered as Macky Sall’s MPs; as it is he who had chosen and invested them during the legislative elections of July 31, 2022, sometimes against the advice or to the detriment of allies of the personality who will be elected in 2024.

These MPs will in no way be beholden to the new head of state. It is added that no one can guess the conditions and circumstances of the election of this new President of the Republic with its share of uncertainties and necessary negotiations to give pledges or forge alliances with this or that political coterie. It is obvious to say that the situation will be exactly the same, if the new President of the Republic comes from the political factions of the Yewwi Askan Wi (Yaw) coalition or from the Yaw-Wallu inter-coalition, which, it must be underlined, were shattered following the adventures of the National Dialogue and especially the examination of the law reforming the Electoral Code. The scenario that will make the situation even more inextricable will be when the new President of the Republic does not come from any of the political camps present in the National Assembly or from a very small minority.

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This means that the Prime Minister who will be appointed under these conditions will have all the trouble to be accepted by the National Assembly or to pass any piece of legislation. Thus, Senegal is heading straight for an institutional deadlock in 2024 and the Head of State will be deprived of any political or institutional weapon to act. The situation will be even more chaotic and politically unsustainable as the government could manage not to pass its budget for the year 2025.  It should be explained that the MPs will be able to refuse to vote the budget which will be presented to them and in the event that the President of the Republic dissolves the National Assembly at the expiry of the period of prohibition, i.e. say, in September 2024, it will be materially impossible to organize legislative elections and install a new National Assembly which would vote on the 2025 budget before December 31, 2024. In such a scenario, the voted appropriations would be renewed and therefore the Head of State will not have a budget that translates or reflects his economic policy. They will execute the budget and the headings that were of the 2024 budget.

Moreover, a certain scenario of the year 2000, when President Abdoulaye Wade arrived, could be envisaged with a parliamentary majority which took it upon itself not to hinder the new President in any way and to vote with closed eyes on all the texts submitted by the government. Ousmane Tanor Dieng, who was the boss of the Socialist Party, still in the majority in the National Assembly, had define this line of conduct to which his comrades had subscribed, who were no less keen to save their jobs as MPs. President Wade made do with it until he was overtaken by the urgency of getting his MPs elected. Nevertheless, he had, in a way, « compensated » the dismissed MPs. In any event, we can eloquently see that the new types of Members who burst in to wreak havoc in the hemicycle to smash the furniture, carry away the ballot boxes, snatch the microphones, vociferate insults and stand on the tables or even beat and kick a woman MP, do not have the democratic culture even less the dress or even the education to adopt republican behaviour which would allow them to gain height in the name of the higher interests of the Nation. On the contrary, these nihilists for whom nothing is sacred, will be happy to block Senegal as they seek to do so systematically.

The government must bring the reform project back to the National Assembly

The catastrophe is therefore looming and it is damaging for the political class to show culpable casualness or laxity. President Macky Sall and his government seem to have glimpsed it and had tabled on the table of the National Assembly a draft reform of Article 87 of the Constitution, in order to reduce the time for dissolution of the National Assembly. Faced with vocal opposition from opposition MPs and elements of civil society, the government hastened to withdraw the draft text, without any further discussion. The Minister of Justice, Ismaïla Madior Fall was quick to say that President Sall would be willing to withdraw the draft text and the MPs of Bby were quick to formally request the withdrawal of the text; what the government has agreed to do. The reform was thus abandoned with disconcerting ease and yet, we cannot fail to note that the passivity of the government in the present case raises questions, not to say doubt. It seems that at the very least, the government had to take responsibility for holding all actors accountable to history. Some MPs subscribed to the withdrawal of the text to ensure that their beefsteak was preserved, for a few more months, but it will have been useful that the fate of the republic and the Nation be a primary concern. Although Senegal has ended up establishing a practice, since the accession of President Wade in 2000, of helping MPs, in the event of the early dissolution of the National Assembly, to leave with a certain amount of money to pay any debts or to support financial or other shortfalls.

It is the responsibility of President Macky Sall who, by the country’s Constitution, is the guarantor of the proper functioning of the institutions, to bring the text back to the National Assembly and that the government takes the time for discussion and explanation and gives itself the means to make it pass. I still do believe that if the same energy deployed to have the reform of the Electoral Code adopted were appropriate for this fundamental and crucial reform, the MPs would grasp its significance. In their argument for withdrawing the text, the deputies of Bby and the government said that President Sall would have no interest in the said text and therefore accepted its withdrawal. Would he have interests somewhere in the other texts? Admittedly, the reform of Article 87 of the Constitution, even if it had been discussed during the 2019 and 2021 Dialogues, had not yet been able to achieve consensus during the last Political Dialogue of 2023 and the question was left to the follow-up committee. It turns out that the defendants had missed meetings of the Monitoring Committee. Has the alali launched against the reform been able to awaken the fear of the syndrome of June 23, 2011? For the record, the regime of President Wade was almost toppled, that famous day, due to strong opposition from the streets against a constitutional reform project.

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH