Shoddy episode in Senegal’s democratic history

The news on March 15 of Ousmane Sonko’s release from prison, paving the way for a strong opposition showing in Presidential elections that were held on March 24, unleashed spontaneous celebrations in Dakar, with young supporters singing in Wolof: “We have missed you, Sonko!”

The release – as part of an amnesty law that saw a mass liberation of people imprisoned for “political acts” – ended a shoddy episode in Senegal’s democratic history, one that threatened to destabilise the country in a region that has faced a series of military coups d’état – and one that is certain to damage outgoing President Macky Sall’s legacy.

Sall unilaterally announced on February 3 that elections scheduled for February 25 would be postponed. Repeated interference in elections and the chaos around postponing and then re-instating the elections, held on March 24, tainted Senegal’s reputation as West Africa’s most stable democracy. Although Sall claimed that his unconstitutional move was in the interests of national dialogue to allow free, transparent and inclusive elections, most observers believe his actions were because his chosen successor, current Prime Minister Amadou Ba, was unlikely to win enough votes in the first-round elections to make it onto the ballot in the second round, let alone win outright with 50% plus one vote in the first round of Senegal’s two-stage election process.

Sall has repeatedly used powers of appointment that the Fifth Republic-style Constitution gives him to control the polls. Senegal’s Constitution prevents candidates with criminal convictions from standing for two years after their conviction. Following Sall’s very narrow victory against his main opponent, Karim Wade, in 2012, Wade was arrested and imprisoned in Dakar in 2013, accused of salting away $1.3-billion during the Presidency of his father, Abdoulaye Wade. Sall appointee Abdoulaye Sylla, then the inspector-general, conducted a worldwide investigation against Wade, who had held several government portfolios alongside Sall during his father’s rule. The two-year probe resulted in a six-year conviction for corruption for Wade in 2015 – sufficient time to make Wade ineligible to run against Sall in 2019.

Similarly, Sonko, who came third in Presidential polls in 2019, was excluded from running in 2024 because of a two-month suspended sentence for defamation for accusing the Tourism Minister of embezzlement. A court cleared Sonko of rape charges in May last year but found him guilty of “corrupting a minor”, sentencing him to two years in jail – a charge which Sonko is challenging. When a court in late 2023 ordered that Sonko’s name be restored to the electoral list, Sall turned once more to Sylla, bringing him out of retirement to sit as a new member of the independent national electoral commission, to replace what local media dubbed an “indocile” member.

Then there’s the case of Khalifa Sall (no relation), former mayor of the capital, Dakar, and one of Senegal’s most popular politicians. Curiously, Khalifa Sall, after he declared his interest in challenging Macky Sall in 2019, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for embezzling $3.4-million – a conviction he and his supporters claimed was political and designed to prevent him from contesting the Presidential elections – which it did. He declared Sall’s electoral delay a “coup d’état that doesn’t speak its name”.

Sall won accolades when he committed not to seek a third term. His predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade – the country’s first President under a democratic electoral system – had provoked widespread violence when he stood. But Sall’s latest most extreme interventions have given rise to speculation that an electoral pact between Sall and Wade had gone awry.

Local commentators believe that Sall’s pardoning of Wade and Wade leaving the country for exile in Qatar were part of an arrangement that he would have a free run as candidate for the 2024 polls. However, any Sall-Wade pact was thrown in the air by the Constitutional Court, which vets all candidates’ eligibility. The court excluded Wade on the grounds that he was a dual French national. Wade claims he had given up his French nationality in good time but the Constitutional Council declared that he had renounced his French nationality too late. The Constitutional Court decision was in breach of an earlier national dialogue in June 2023 – negotiated with the involvement of Senegal’s powerful religious leaders who back Wade – that Wade could run in future Presidential elections. At the time, a source close to Sall told French publication Le Monde that Sall was “surprised” that Wade was disqualified from running, and that Sall feared giving the impression of breaking his word to the religious leaders. Wade himself questioned the legitimacy of the vetting process, alleging that two judges on the Constitutional Council had conflicts of interest.

Sall’s political shenanigans have drawn criticism from several quarters at home and abroad. The US called the election postponement “illegitimate” and, while several commentators on social media accused France of being behind Sall’s move, France maintained its public and private commitment not to get involved. Heading into the elections, the ruling party was in disarray, as it did not have confidence in its candidate, Ba, and Sall’s longstanding ally, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, resigned in disgust after Sall’s original announcement.

At the time of writing, alleged corruption, investigations and reprisals looked set once again to dominate the Presidential polls and their aftermath. Sonko – a former tax inspector – drew the outgoing President’s ire for allegations he made in his book, published in 2017, of grand corruption in Sall’s government surrounding the country’s emerging oil sector.

Faced with his exclusion from the Presidential ballot, Sonko’s party put forward a fellow former tax inspector, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, secretary-general of Sonko’s movement, which had been dissolved. Either way, Sonko or Faye are likely to raise questions about Sall’s time in office. But perhaps it is time, too, that political leadership focuses investigations on the Constitution, the semi-Presidential system inherited from colonial master France. Since the 1990s, these francophone countries’ leaders control the reform programme and have kept semi-Presidential systems. Concentrating power in an executive President – giving him powers of appointment over the judiciary, the Constitutional Court and the electoral commission – has too often resulted in corrupting the judiciary, routine election rigging and manipulation of term limits.