Political Crisis in Senegal

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Background
• Reasons Behind the Current Political Crisis in Senegal
• What Has Been Senegal’s Recent Democratic Record?

Background

• Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country in West Africa, on the Atlantic Ocean coastline.
• Senegal is bordered by Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, Guinea to the southeast and Guinea-Bissau to the southwest.
• On February 3^rd, Senegal’s President Maky Sall postponed Presidential elections due on February 25.
• 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 (capital of Senegal) has been decried as a Constitutional coup d’état by the government’s critics.

Reasons Behind the Current Political Crisis in Senegal

• The current unrest is a repeat of the bloody violence witnessed on the streets of Dakar last year when more than 20 lives were lost and hundreds were injured.
• The reason behind the violence was a two-year prison sentences lapped on the leading opposition candidate Ousmane Sonko.
  • He is a populist who targeted the country’s elites for corruption and resisted the influence of the former colonial power France.
• He was convicted in a trial for immoral behavior 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.
• The decision to delay polls has sparked speculation over Mr. Sall’s machinations to consolidate his position between now and the elections.

What Has Been Senegal’s Recent Democratic Record?

• Sall’s retrograde decision to deferelections marks a change from 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 doubts, 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.

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Source: Political Crisis in Senegal