2023-11-18 11:00:00
Rough day for Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko. The Supreme Court in Senegal finally overturned this Friday, November 17, a judgment which released the imprisoned opponent in the February 2024 presidential race, specifying that the case would be retried. “The Court overturns and annuls the decision of the Ziguinchor court of October 12 and returns the case to the Dakar high court” for retrial, announced the President of the Supreme Court, Ali Ciré Ba.
The suspense was at its height when last month, the court of Ziguinchor, the city of which Ousmane Sonko has been mayor since 2022, canceled the removal of the opponent from the electoral lists, making possible his candidacy for the presidential election in February 2024, in which he would be one of the leading candidates.
The state appealed this decision. “This decision does not suit us. The case will be retried but the sponsorships will soon be over,” reacted to AFP Me Babacar Ndiaye, one of the opponent’s lawyers.
Countdown
Obtaining sponsorships is an essential step in the presidential candidacy, which must take place before the submission of candidacies scheduled for December 11 to 26.
However, the Ministry of the Interior has until now refused to issue Ousmane Sonko with the official forms which would allow him to collect his sponsorships, arguing that the decision of the Ziguinchor judge was not final.
The Supreme Court has not set a deadline for the new judgment concerning this case at the Dakar court. She considered that the decision taken by the Ziguinchor judge was irregular.
West African justice has delivered its verdict
Earlier in the morning, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja had inflicted another severe blow on the candidate – who has long denounced a plot by President Macky Sall to politically eliminate and instrumentalized justice – by judging that the State of Senegal had not violated its rights. “Senegal has not violated any of its rights,” affirmed the Court.
She had been contacted by the opponent’s lawyers to contest his removal from the Senegalese electoral lists after a conviction in a morals case.
“The ECOWAS Court of Justice gives Macky Sall (the Senegalese president) the go-ahead to destroy his opponent,” reacted Me Juan Branco, one of Ousmane Sonko’s lawyers. “By judging as she did, dictators could now act as the State of Senegal did and take advantage of the Court’s jurisprudence,” said Me Ciré Clédor Ly, another of her counsel.
The hearing in Dakar opened Friday morning in a Supreme Court that looked like an entrenched camp, protected by a strong police force, noted an AFP journalist.
Bras de fer
The standoff between Ousmane Sonko and the State in several politico-judicial cases has kept Senegal in suspense for two and a half years and has triggered the deadliest unrest in years in the country.
His sovereignist and pan-Africanist speech, his diatribes against “the state mafia”, multinationals and the economic and political influence exercised, according to him, by the former French colonial power have earned him strong support among those under 20, which represent half of the population. His detractors see him as an incendiary agitator. Ousmane Sonko, 49, was found guilty on June 1 of debauchery of a minor and sentenced to two years in prison. Having refused to appear at the trial which he denounced as a plot to exclude him from the election, he was convicted in absentia. He was imprisoned at the end of July on other charges, including calling for insurrection, criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise and endangering state security.
The opponent, who recently interrupted a hunger strike, called for resistance on Thursday evening, believing that the sovereignty of the Senegalese and the “destiny of the nation” were at stake on Friday. “We must stand up for fair, free and independent justice, for the right to live in a country without fear of being arrested and imprisoned without justification,” he said on his social networks.
Dakar was calm late Friday afternoon. Authorities have banned the circulation of motorcycles and the retail sale of fuel.
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