(Dakar) If everything had gone as planned, millions of Senegalese would have lined up in front of schools on Sunday to elect their fifth president. But nothing happened as planned and some like Amy Ndao Fall insisted on slipping a symbolic ballot into a dummy ballot box.
Amy Ndao Fall, like Awa Mbow Kane, both doctors, went to a simulated polling station improvised in Dakar by the citizen collective Aar Sunu Election (“Let’s preserve our election”) on the day the Senegalese were supposed to vote.
Amy Ndao Fall and Awa Mbow Kane are among those many who were shocked by the postponement because they consider respecting the electoral deadlines as a mark of attachment to democracy which is the pride of the country and distinguishes it in a region plagued by faits accomplis.
Amy Ndao Fall and Awa Mbow Kane keep their ages secret. But Amy Ndao Fall says she’s been “voting since [qu’elle] of voting age. Voting, and voting on the agreed date, “this has always been in our culture”.
For them and all those who wanted to ward off adversity, Aar Sunu Election placed in a room at its headquarters, under the green, gold and red national flag, a ballot box, a voting booth and three ballots: one green for an “election before April 2, 2024″, a white for “the postponement of the election”, a black for “democracy in mourning”.
Behind a table sit an office president, the representative of an electoral commission and a secretary. By midday, the secretary had noted by hand in his register the identities, telephone numbers and signatures of 16 voters.
PHOTO JOHN WESSELS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A woman votes in a fictitious polling station set up by the citizen collective Aar Sunu Election (Let’s protect our elections).
Outside, the capital is given over to hot Sunday apathy.
On a voting day, the Senegalese would have lined up in front of the offices with a certain solemnity. At the end of the afternoon the question would have arisen as to whether the operations should be extended to allow everyone to vote. The first results before a possible second round could have been known in the evening.
This great moment would have occupied the radios and televisions continuously. Instead, “election day of mourning” messages circulated widely on social networks.
The Senegalese have always voted between February 21 and 28 since 1978. President Macky Sall triggered a shock wave on February 3 by decreeing a last minute postponement.
He cited the heated quarrels which gave rise to the process of validating the candidacies and the fear that a contested ballot would provoke new outbursts of violence after those of 2021 and 2023.
“We want to vote”
The Constitutional Council has since overturned it, without setting a date. A vast political and citizen movement is calling for the vote to be held before April 2, the date of the official expiration of President Sall’s mandate.
Mr. Sall suspends the determination of the date to a dialogue to which he invited qualified and unsuccessful candidates and all political and social actors on Monday and Tuesday.
PHOTO LEWIS JOLY, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Senegalese President Macky Sall triggered a shock wave on February 3 by decreeing a last-minute postponement of the election.
The Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting at a summit on Saturday and of which Senegal is a pillar “took note” of President Sall’s commitment to leave at the end of his mandate on April 2. She calls on all stakeholders to “prioritize dialogue to preserve Senegalese democratic achievements”.
But Aar Sunu Election and 16 of the 19 approved candidates refuse to take part in the discussions. Security forces on Sunday prevented the 16 competitors from meeting on a field where they had arranged to meet their supporters.
Some fell back on the seat of one of the main candidates, Khalifa Sall. They also carried out a fictitious vote with a single black ballot “RIP February 25”, for “Rest in peace February 25”.
“Today is a dark day for our democracy […] Senegal is a cracked democracy because, for the first time, we are touching [ce mythe] what the presidential election was,” said Khalifa Sall (no relation to the president).
At the fictitious Aar Sunu Election polling station, Amy Ndao Fall came out with ink on her little finger, as if in real life, to signify that she had voted.
Abdoulaye Bousso, still a doctor, inked two fingers. He was at the forefront of the national plan to combat COVID-19. The postponement of the election is “another crisis”, he half-jokes, national football team jersey on his back.
Seriously: “We want to vote. Before April 2, it is mandatory. This endless campaign, these demonstrations, all these people killed for years… We must turn this page and get back to work.”