Following the dissolution of the Assembly by Senegalese president Bassirou Diomaye Faye, legislative elections are scheduled for 17 November.
Senegal’s ruling party is in a strong position ahead of the elections on 17 November called by President Bassirou Diomaye Faye on Thursday. It faces a rejuvenated opposition that has only two months to regroup.
The head of state’s speech, which began at 8pm, was very short. In French, and then in Wolof, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye announced on Thursday evening the news that everyone had been waiting for: the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of early parliamentary elections on 17 November.
“I am dissolving the National Assembly in order to ask the sovereign people for the institutional means that will enable me to give substance to the systemic transformation that I have promised them,” said the head of state, firing a few arrows at his opponents, whom he accused of “rowing against the will of the Senegalese people” and “promoting the cult of deadlock”.
While the decision came as no surprise, the pace will now accelerate for Senegal’s political class, which has 60 days to prepare for legislative elections that could reshuffle the parliamentary deck. Logically, Senegalese voters have always given elected presidents a majority in the Assembly, giving them a free hand to pursue their programme and implement their reforms. This was the case even though Macky Sall’s former majority was outvoted by the opposition, led by the Patriotes Africains du Sénégal pour le Travail, l’Éthique et la Fraternité (PASTEF), in the July 2022 legislative elections.
End of the stand-off between Sonko and the Assembly
“The situation where the government was in a minority in the Assembly was unprecedented. But we could have found a way to discuss things,” says an opposition leader. “Instead, they set up a showdown.” The general policy statement, which Ousmane Sonko, the target of a motion of censure, was reluctant to make, had provoked a tug-of-war between the prime minister and his deputies. It was finally confirmed on 12 September by Faye, who dissolved the National Assembly at the last minute. The opposition described the move as “outrageous”.
On Friday, Anta Babacar Ngom, a candidate in the last presidential election, spoke of a “dangerous and worrying precedent” and a “challenge to the value of the presidential word”. “The arguments put forward clumsily conceal an attempt to consolidate undivided power, far removed from the aspirations of millions of Senegalese people who had hoped for a genuine democratic renewal,” she said.
Faye’s PASTEF was in the minority in the Assembly as part of the Yewwi Askan Wi (YAW) coalition, with just 26 seats. “Today, more than ever, the time has come to usher in a new era for our five-year term,” said the head of state, describing the former Assembly as “the last obstructive manifestation of a fallen regime”.
Electoral strategy
Many people now expect Sonko, who is also the party’s president, to head the list – although he will not be seeking the presidency of the National Assembly, according to a close connection. According to one PASTEF official, the party could decide to go it alone in the legislative elections for the first time in its history.
We have a young party that needs a stable majority… Beyond an absolute majority, we have to think about the future, find our identity and prove what our party is worth.
“We were the big losers in the YAW coalition. The majority system forced us not to go it alone so that Macky Sall wouldn’t have an absolute majority, but that cost us in terms of representation,” he says. The situation changed with the victory of Faye in the first round of the presidential election last March.
“We have a young party that needs a stable majority,” he says. “A coalition always has its problems and forces you to haggle all the time: which posts to allocate, which promises to make to your allies… Beyond an absolute majority, we have to think about the future, find our identity and prove what our party is worth.”
New strategy from that of Macky Sall
This strategy runs counter to the one adopted by Sall during his two terms in office. The former president had established a very broad coalition that included the country’s main historical parties, such as the Parti Socialiste (PS) and the Alliance des Forces de Progrès (AFP), which he announced – at the beginning of September – as coming to an end.
How will the various groups that make up Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) adapt to this new situation? Its members met on Friday morning to discuss this. A few days before the dissolution, however, the group’s leader, Abdou Mbow, promised that a new opposition coalition would be created to replace and even go beyond BBY.
But could this ambition be thwarted by the emergence of the Nouvelle Responsabilité (NR) movement, recently launched by former prime minister and unsuccessful presidential candidate Amadou Ba? This movement hopes to represent a “third way”, in the words of Zahra Iyane Thiam, former minister of microfinance. “Discussions are still ongoing, but we are at a time when the big picture is coming together,” says this close friend of Ba.
However, she points out that several questions remain unanswered, in particular the three-month deadline for organising the collection of sponsorships – a deadline laid down in the electoral code. “The Constitutional Council, which was asked by the president to set the date for the elections, said that sponsorship was not compulsory, that the elections would be held on a Sunday and that the deposit for the previous elections would be maintained, i.e. 15m CFA francs [$25,420],” says Ba. However, the Constitutional Council’s decision has not yet been made public.
“On this issue, Senegal has a tradition of dialogue and exchange between political actors,” says Thiam. “The electoral process has always benefited from a strong consensus. For the sake of the presidency’s image, we cannot allow ourselves to be pressured.”
The Africa Report
