The Senegalese were called on January 23, 2022 to appoint their mayors, for the first time by direct universal suffrage. According to almost final results, the opposition won a large number of large cities including the capital Dakar.
“As I speak to you, we have won the cities of Dakar, Ziguinchor, Thiès and Guédiawaye”, declared to AFP Déthié Fall, the national representative of the opposition coalition Yewwi Askan Wi (“Free the people” in Wolof). The presidential majority also bit the dust in Kaolack, the largest city in the center, according to the provisional results.
The ballot on Sunday, January 23 to elect the mayors and presidents of departments was a political test five months before the legislative elections and two years before the presidential election. Result: the two most serious opponents of President Macky Sall emerge strengthened from this election.
The opposition lists were led in Dakar by Barthélemy Dias, close to former mayor Khalifa Sall, imprisoned for several years and rendered illegible. The symbolic dimension of a victory in the capital, with high international visibility and where 20% of the population live, is often considered “a stepping stone for the presidency”.
Ousmane Sonko’s victory in Ziguinchor is also a blow for power. A central figure in the March 2021 protests that shook Senegal, Ousmane Sonko is tipped as one of the main competitors in the 2024 presidential election. The vote confirmed his popularity.
macky Sall had warned that he would not feel challenged by local elections. “How do you want, in a democracy, that a President of the Republic, elected by universal suffrage, can depend on the results of the communities, the municipalities”, he said in December 2021 on RFI.
Macky Sall, re-elected in 2019, a leader very listened to by the international community on the crisis in the Sahel or the question of the debt, maintains the vagueness on his intentions for 2024.
A constitutional revision approved in 2016 limits the number of presidential terms to two. Voices suggest that this reform could have reset the counters to zero, as was notably the case in Côte d’Ivoire for Alassane Ouattara in 2020. The refusal to see Mr. Sall run for a third term was one of the slogans of the opposition demonstrations in 2021.
The local elections took place calmly, without major incidents. Senegalese democracy has once again shown its uniqueness in a region marked by repeated coups and democratic setbacks.