It’s official: the campaign for the presidential election began in Senegal this Saturday, March 9. After long weeks of waiting and uncertainty, Macky Sall’s decision to set the presidential election for Sunday March 24 has accelerated a process that he himself had stopped. On February 3, the Senegalese president announced that he would cancel the February 25 presidential election, barely ten hours before the start of the electoral campaign. His decision had caused great tensions in this country of 18 million inhabitants, known to be stable and democratic.
The campaign, which has just begun, will end on Friday March 22, according to a presidential decree published Thursday evening, one week less than the deadline normally provided for by the electoral code. It will take place during the Muslim fasting month, Ramadan, which is due to begin this Monday. “This horizon that is emerging is the victory of all the people who wanted to go to an election of which they were deprived,” Babacar Guèye, member of a citizen movement, told AFP.
The 19 candidates selected by the Constitutional Council are all ready to reorganize their campaign. They were all summoned on Friday to RTS, the public television channel, to record the campaign clips which will be broadcast from Sunday. Behind the scenes, some candidates nevertheless say they are confused to see the election arrive so quickly, reports Young Africa. “We were not in this logic. We expected pressure from Macky Sall, since he refused to issue a decree calling the election. We now have to completely reorganize ourselves. This represents a lot of logistics.” confides one of them.
19 candidates including one in prison
This Saturday, March 9, the government candidate, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, just dismissed from office to run for campaign, must present his program to the press in Dakar, just like the dissolved main opposition party, Pastef . However, the latter is experiencing a particular and unprecedented situation in Senegal: its two main figures are still in detention. Ousmane Sonko, leader of the anti-system party and main actor in a standoff with power which has turned into a deadly confrontation since 2021 in which dozens of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others have been arrested, remains out of the running for the presidential election. And his deputy, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the party’s official candidate for the election, is also in detention – he was arrested in April 2023 for contempt of court after a publication on Facebook. This situation is one of the major gray areas of this electoral campaign.
According to their lawyers, both should benefit from the general amnesty law passed in controversy on March 6. Proposed by President Macky Sall to “pacify the public space”, it concerns all offenses or crimes committed between February 1, 2021 and February 25, 2024, whether judged or not, “relating to demonstrations or having political motivations” . But although the law was passed in the National Assembly with a large majority, it has still not been promulgated. According to the newspaper Young Africait will not be promulgated before March 14, but the candidate could benefit from an earlier release.
Another uncertainty: the date of the second round of the election. It should normally take place 14 days after the first. However, this would lead to March 7, 5 days after the official end of Macky Sall’s mandate. The President of the National Assembly could take over the transfer of power with Macky Sall’s successor, but the question has not yet been resolved.