Why have fresh protests erupted in Senegal? | Explained Premium

Senegal's President Sall postpones elections, sparking protests and fears of a constitutional coup in a beacon of African democracy.

The story so far: On February 3, weeks before the end of his second and final term, Senegal’s President Maky Sall postponed Presidential elections due on February 25. Opposition legislators, who were dragged out of parliament by riot police, were furious that the vote was deferred on grounds of a dispute between the National Assembly (parliament) and the Constitutional Council over the manner of selection of candidates. The house thus packed with government lawmakers has effectively allowed Mr. Sall 10 more months in office by resetting the next election for December 15. Protests have emerged across the country, with the police cracking down on protestors through indiscriminate detentions and violence leading to the death of one of them. The unprecedented decision in Dakar has been decried as a Constitutional coup d’état by the government’s critics.

The current unrest is a repeat of the bloody violence witnessed on the streets of Dakar last year, the worst in decades, when more than 20 lives were lost and hundreds were injured, according to Amnesty International. The clashes followed a two-year prison sentence slapped on the leading opposition candidate Ousmane Sonko, a former populist tax inspector who targeted the country’s elites for corruption and resisted the influence of the former colonial power France. Mr. Sonko, leader of the banned African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity was convicted in a trial for immoral behaviour against a woman. In the protests that erupted in 2021, security forces reportedly shot dead 12 persons. In January this year, the Constitutional Council barred Mr. Sonko from the Presidential race.

President Sall took office in 2012 riding a wave of popular resistance against his predecessor seeking a third term. Yet he asserted last March that he was legally permitted to run for a third term. Mr. Sall’s reasoning was that since the Presidential tenure was reduced from seven to five years during his first term, the new constitutional clock should be assumed as ticking from 2019, when he was re-elected under the new rule, thus entitling him to run for another term this year. The decision to delay polls has sparked speculation over Mr. Sall’s machinations to consolidate his position between now and the elections.

Mr. Sall’s retrograde decision to defer elections marks a break with the country’s periodic and smooth transfer of power witnessed for decades under a multi-party democratic system. Unlike all of its neighbours, Senegal has never undergone a military coup or a civil war since it gained independence from France in 1960. This is a country viewed as a beacon of democracy in a region increasingly under the grip of military takeovers.

Moreover, President Sall has been instrumental in pushing military dictators in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to facilitate a timely transfer of power to elected governments. In early 2017, Senegalese troops successfully led a regional mission to force out long-time leader Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia, when he refused to step down after losing elections.

Dakar has evidently abandoned this important regional role at a juncture when a number of west African states have recently descended into military dictatorships. The situation in Senegal raises the awful spectre of misrule, as in Guinea, where President Alpha Condé’s controversial re-election for a third term in 2020 ended up in a coup the following year. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are already under military rule.

The return of military dictatorships in African countries has been a recurrent theme in the 2020s and a serious regression after the heroic liberation struggles they waged in the 1960s. The big powers must reconsider their traditional role in the region as a whole.