(Dakar) Senegalese opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye largely won the March 24 presidential election in the first round with 54.28% of the votes, far ahead of government candidate Amadou Ba (35.79%), according to the final results announced Friday by the Constitutional Council.
The anti-system opponent “Mr. Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye is elected President of the Republic of Senegal”, indicates a decision of the Council consulted Friday by AFP and confirming the provisional figures announced Wednesday by the National Voting Census Commission, under the justice.
The Council “was not informed of any dispute” from the 19 candidates, the third of whom, Aliou Mamadou Dia, won 2.8% of the votes.
Mr. Faye will be sworn in late Tuesday morning in the new town of Diamniadio, the presidency said. The transfer of power with his predecessor Macky Sall is then planned at the Presidential Palace in Dakar.
“Continue and intensify”
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed to the president-designate on Friday his “desire to continue and intensify the partnership between Senegal and France”, during their first telephone interview since Sunday’s election.
This is the first time since Senegal’s independence in 1960 that an opponent has won in the first round.
Participation was 61.30%. This is less than in 2019, when outgoing President Macky Sall obtained a second term, also in the first round, but more than in 2012.
The serious political crisis caused by the last minute postponement of the presidential election in February and the tightening of the calendar with the setting of the new date of March 24 have sowed doubt about the possibility of an inauguration of the new president before the official expiration of President Sall’s mandate, April 2.
This transfer will take place within the required time frame, which is significant in a country that prides itself on its democratic practices.
Mr. Faye, 44, never before held in national elective office, becomes the fifth and youngest president of the West African country of 18 million people. His opponents recognized his victory.
His election was preceded by three years of tension and unrest. Senegal, known as one of the most stable countries in West Africa, experienced a new crisis in February when President Sall decreed the postponement of the election.
Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested since 2021, and Senegal’s democratic credentials have been examined in a new light.
Mr. Faye himself was detained for months before his release in mid-March, in the middle of the electoral campaign.
After weeks of confusion, Senegalese went to the polls on Sunday. International observers praised the smooth running of the operations.
Mr. Faye presents himself as the man of the “rupture”, of the reestablishment of a national “sovereignty” sold off, according to him, abroad, and of a “left-wing Pan-Africanism”.
He is committed “to governing with humility, with transparency, to fighting corruption” at all levels, he declared Monday during his first public appearance since the election.
He stated “national reconciliation”, the “refoundation” of institutions and “significant reduction in the cost of living” as his “priority projects”.
But he also worked to reassure foreign partners who closely followed the election.
Senegal “will remain the friendly country and the safe and reliable ally of any partner who engages with us in virtuous, respectful and mutually productive cooperation,” he said.