A sense of relief swept over Senegal. The country’s president, Macky Sall, announced Monday night in a speech to the nation on national television and radio that he will not stand in the February 2024 elections.
The surprising words of the Senegalese leader – it is the first time that a president has organized an election without running for re-election – were the first step towards calm after months of protests and social tension, which led to one of the worst outbreaks of violence in recent years. recent years in the African country, with at least twenty deaths at the hands of the police, hundreds of injuries and arrests, or the looting and looting of dozens of public buildings, gas stations and French interests.
The founder and director of the Centro Afrikajom think tank, Alioune Tine, condensed the feelings of many Senegalese minutes after finishing the speech by the Senegalese head of state.
“A huge bomb has just been defused with this historic decision. Its impact is regional and global. Now it must continue working to reinforce peace and stability.”
The possibility that Sall, at the head of the nation since 2012, had opted for a third mandate, an extreme prohibited by the Senegalese constitution that limits two five-year terms in power, had triggered tension in the country.
Last night, Sall wanted to make it clear that his step aside is a gesture in favor of social peace, but that the law protected him, since the change in the Magna Carta to limit presidential terms to two had no retroactive effect and was carried out in 2016, therefore his first presidential five-year period should not be counted. “My decision, long and maturely reflected, is not to be a candidate in the next elections… although the Constitution gives me the right,” he stressed.
Although Sall had said on several occasions that this would be his last term, rumors that he had changed his mind had gripped a very young Senegalese society for months, disenchanted by the economic crisis and rampant unemployment.
Sall puffed out his chest yesterday. “I have a code of honor and a sense of responsibility that push me to preserve my dignity and my word (…) Senegal goes beyond me and is full of leaders capable of pushing the country forward and overcoming emergencies.”
Beyond Sall’s political aspirations, at the center of social tension is also the two-year prison sentence for opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, very popular among young people and the diaspora for his pan-African, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist discourse, for a strange crime of “corruption of young people”, which de facto served to prevent his candidacy for the 2024 elections.
From the side of the young politician, a shameless plot was denounced to derail his aspirations to be president. The case is an inheritance in addition to the rape complaint that a young employee of a massage parlor launched in 2021 about Sonko.
Although the court acquitted the opposition leader for lack of evidence, the forced turn to accuse him of “violating morality and facilitating debauchery” of the young woman was for his faithful an obvious sign that the objective was to get the popular ex out of the way. Treasury official and current mayor of Ziguinchor, capital of the southern region of Casamance.
Although he did not expressly quote him, Sall referred to Sonko’s calls for chaos, who hours before his speech had called on the youth to take to the streets “to end the fight.”
“The disastrous objective of the instigators – Sall pointed out – was clear: to sow terror in the country”. The president even called the protesters “organized crime against the Senegalese nation” and part of an “insurrectionary machine.”
The signs of recognition of Sall’s political maturity multiplied from the end of the speech. The musician Youssou N’dour and one of the most popular people in Senegal, publicly applauded him.
“A President of the Republic who will organize, without participating, the election of his successor, occurs for the first time in our common history. You are a very great president and you will remain in memory as an incomparable head of state. You have honored your people and all of Africa.”
The reactions were not confined solely to the Senegalese borders. The echo spread throughout the region.
The former president of Niger between 2011 and 2021, Issoufou Mahamadou, welcomed his former colleague’s decision, which he described as “proof of great political intelligence.” “In this way,” he added, “Senegal continues to be the bearer of the torch whose flame illuminates our continent.”
