Seven million Senegalese are convened on July 31 to elect their deputies during legislative elections having test value before the presidential election of February 2024. The opposition wants to take advantage of this ballot to impose cohabitation on President Macky Sall and curb the intentions that it lends him to want to serve a third term. President Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, remains vague about his intentions in 2024.
This legislative election, in a single round, will renew for five years the 165 seats of the unicameral Parliament largely controlled by the presidential camp. The deputies are elected according to a method that mixes proportional voting with national lists for 53 parliamentarians, and majority voting in the departments for 97 others. The diaspora has 15 deputies. The election campaign, which lasted 21 days, ends on July 29. Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming election.
Challenges
“We can consider these legislative elections as the first round of the presidential election of 2024”, told AFP the researcher and political analyst Cheikh Guèye. The election takes place in a context of rising prices, in particular because of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, an argument used by the opposition against power. The latter, for his part, highlights subsidies for petroleum products and foodstuffs as well as his infrastructure construction programme.
The opposition wants to force Macky Sall to give up any hint of candidacy in 2024. “If Macky Sall loses them (legislative)he will no longer talk about a 3rd term”assured Ousmane Sonko, the leader of the main opposition coalition, “Yewwi Askan Wi” (Free the People in Wolof language) and 2024 presidential candidate.
For power, the legislative elections are a test after the local March, won by the opposition in major cities of the country such as Dakar, the capital, Ziguinchor (south) and Thiès (west).
The political offer
Eight coalitions are in the running for these legislative elections, including those of the presidential majority, “Benno Bokk Yakaar”, and “Yewwi Askan Wi” formed around Ousmane Sonko, who came third in the 2019 presidential election. to the coalition “Wallu Senegal” (Save Senegal in Wolof), led by ex-president Abdoulaye Wade. The least well-placed coalition in one department committing to supporting the other with the aim of “obtain a parliamentary majority” and “to impose governmental cohabitation”. Macky Sall has promised to appoint a Prime Minister, a post he had abolished and then restored in December 2021, within the victorious formation of the elections.
“We are in the context of highly contested electionsanalyzes the political scientist Maurice Soudieck Dione in the columns of the Senegalese newspaper Daily South. They are also uncertain about the results, which is a guarantee of democratic vitality”.
A campaign marred by violence
Giant rallies and noisy caravans crisscrossed the country generally peacefully, while the pre-campaign had been marked by violent demonstrations which had left at least three people dead. These incidents followed the invalidation by the Ministry of the Interior, confirmed by the Constitutional Council, of the holders of the national list of the coalition led by Ousmane Sonko, invoking the ineligibility of one of its candidates, appearing inadvertently on both among the incumbents and the alternates.
In addition, several opposition figures, including Ousmane Sonko, were forced to give up participating in the elections, not without having called on their supporters to protest against what they considered to be a ploy by President Macky Sall to dismiss his opponents under cover. legal means. Apart from the first demonstration, all the others had been banned by the authorities. On June 29, the opposition finally calmed things down by agreeing to take part in the vote, which it had been threatening to prevent until then.
In a final appeal for calm, the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (Cena), recalls the information site Leral.net, invited “leaders and political parties” at “to sensitize their militants, supporters and sympathizers” so that the July 31 ballot takes place in “peace and security”.