L’Uncertainty still hangs over the outcome of the legislative elections that have just taken place in Senegal. While the power and opposition camps each claim victory in Sunday’s poll which aims to renew the 165 seats of the National Assembly hitherto largely controlled by the presidential coalition, the Senegalese opposition demanded, Wednesday evening in Dakar, the suspension of the publication of the results of the legislative elections, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, to examine his complaints.
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Irregularities and stuffing of ballot boxes pointed out
“We ask the president of the National Commission for the Census of Votes (CNRV) to suspend the publication of the results scheduled for tomorrow [jeudi] to allow us to identify all the irregularities that we have noted in the minutes”, declared during a press conference Déthié Fall, head of the alliance formed by the coalitions Yewwi Askan Wi (Liberate the people in Wolof) and Wallu Senegal (Save Senegal), respectively led by main opponent Ousmane Sonko and ex-president Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012).
Another alliance official, Ms.me Aïda Mbodj, spoke of “ballot stuffing” and “prefabricated and unsigned minutes that they [le pouvoir] created themselves” in localities in northern Senegal, including Matam, Podor, Ranérou and Kanel, strongholds of President Sall. The stake is “200,000 votes”, according to her. “The Senegalese people will oppose this massive fraud,” she said at the press conference. “We are not going to accept a confiscation of the victory. It is an enterprise of massive fraud orchestrated by politicians with certainly the complicity of the territorial administration, said Mr. Sonko.
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Very close results, according to the first figures
Some 7 million Senegalese were called to vote on Sunday. Turnout was 47%, according to the Interior Ministry. The results of the power and opposition camps are very tight, according to figures published by the local press. The CNRV, chaired by the president of the Dakar Court of Appeal, is due to announce the results of the legislative elections on Thursday afternoon, which are a test 19 months before the presidential election.
The opposition claims to want to control Parliament to impose cohabitation on the power camp, unprecedented in this West African country. She also wants to push President Macky Sall to give up the project that is lent to him to run for president in 2024.
President Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, remains vague about his intentions. He has promised to appoint a prime minister – a post he cut in 2019 before restoring it in December 2021 – to the party that won the election.
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